# Golf carts **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 30, 2004, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900 "2004-06-30T16:32:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![justwannano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ab992/32.png) [@justwannano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justwannano)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2004, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/1 "2004-06-30T16:32:01Z")
Generally speaking whats it take to licence a golf cart for the road? I’ve noticed that some of the carts on ebay are licenced to be used on the road. I assume the owner wanted to drive it from home to the golf course. It would be handy ,out here in the boonies, to be able to drive one between fields etc. Heck maybe even the 4 miles to town to do some errands. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2004, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/2 "2004-06-30T16:57:55Z")
- - - It is not possible to license a golf cart for regular road use at all. There have been a couple of _private_ communities that have allowed them, one in Florida and another in Arizona that I have heard of. These were privately-developed retirement communities that provided their own road maintenance–so their roads are essentially private property. They can allow anything on their roads they want, or refuse anything. - The US _federal_ definition of a car is any roadgoing vehicle that has four or more wheels on the ground at all times. To license such a vehicle there are a number of requirements, including but not limited to DOT-rated tires, safety-tempered glass for all side windows (if any), safety _laminated_ glass for the front and rear windshield (if any), appropriate DOT-rated brake lights and head lights, 5-MPH bumpers front and rear, and now–\>either automatic seatbelts or front-seat airbags. Adding all this onto a golf cart would be a task indeed. Individual states can have additional requirements, but _cannot_ void federal regulations on public roadways. - There are small electric carts with (three or four wheels) used by invalids to get around, but these are not explicitly intended for on-road use. I don’t know what the exact limitation is there; they are probably considered the same as a motorized wheelchair, whatever that falls under. - On the other hand, vehicles with three or less wheels on the ground are considered motorcycles (no matter if they are enclosed or not) and they have _far_ fewer physical requirements: basically, DOT rated tires, a DOT-rated headlight and a DOT-rated brake light and a license plate, and those are the only things I know of. Where I live the Dept of Motor Vehicles has you do a two-bit agility test by driving around some painted lines on the DMV parking lot. At this point most states don’t even do emissions testing on motorcycles at all. That’s the reason that custom motorcycle shops can build choppers as wild as they can–you aren’t required to have safety glass of any kind, bumbers, airbags, etc. ~ ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/3 "2004-07-01T00:13:49Z")
Avalon, California allows modified golf carts to be used in its city. [http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi\_m1346/is\_6\_46/ai\_74869819](http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1346/is_6_46/ai_74869819) Of course, it’s on an island so it’s not like there are other vehicles to run into. ---
**Author:** ![stockton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@stockton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stockton)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/4 "2004-07-01T01:37:20Z")
We have a place like that here in suburban Atlanta: “Peachtree City, Ga., with its lush green spaces, inviting boutiques and white picket fences, could fit the description of dozens of U.S. towns. But where it takes a radical departure from Main Street U.S.A. is in its preferred form of transportation–there are an estimated 9,000 golf carts used in a city with a population of 34,000. At McIntosh High, nearly 170 golf carts are usually parked outside, causing some unique traffic problems when the final bell rings.” [http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi\_m0HFI/is\_2\_54/ai\_97200507](http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HFI/is_2_54/ai_97200507) ---
**Author:** ![Berkut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@Berkut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Berkut)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/5 "2004-07-01T04:20:48Z")
> [@DougC](#): > > - > - > - It is not possible to license a golf cart for regular road use at all. … - The US _federal_ definition of a car is any roadgoing vehicle that has four or more wheels on the ground at all times. To license such a vehicle there are a number of requirements How do builders of kit cars get around these requirements? Some just register it as whatever the “donor” car was, but some are built from scratch and registered. What would prevent you from putting a cart together and registering it as a car? ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/6 "2004-07-01T04:25:17Z")
Doesn’t the local authority have to look at a car to see if it is “street legal” before registering it? ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/7 "2004-07-01T16:32:04Z")
> [@](#): > > How do builders of kit cars get around these requirements? Some just register it as whatever the “donor” car was, but some are built from scratch and registered. What would prevent you from putting a cart together and registering it as a car? - - - _You could do that_, if you added all the techinical features that modern cars are required to have: bumpers, laminated windshield glass, airbags/automatic seatbelts, etc. The bumpers requirement is a technical estimate of the inspector–you don’t actually have to run the car into anything of course. - And actually, most kit-cars are re-registered as the frame (or _part_ of the frame) of the already-registered-production-car that they use. They must incorporate the serial-number-bearing portion of the frame of the donor vehicle, even if this just amounts to a 3-foot swuare piece of square channel with a serial-number plate on it. …This is the reason that you see in hot-rodding magazines, that they go out and find a rusted-out frame from an ancient 1920’s-30’s-40’s-era car or truck–because legally, they can then re-register it as street legal, as that vehicle–even if they ONLY use the frame from that vehicle. They can totally rebuild the body any way they want and put any engine in that they want because there were no limitations on emissions back then (vehicles back then had very few techincal requirements, and according to US federal law, previously-manufactured vehicles only have to meed the requirements that were in place _at the time of their manufacture_). ~ ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/8 "2004-07-01T16:46:53Z")
[well nuts, hit reply too soon] - - - The companies that do build kit-cars totally from scratch have to get them approved according to _current automotive standards_. The kit cars have to satisfy all the same requirements that any regular car from any automaker would have to. - This was the reason for the Carroll Shelby fiasco: some time back, Carrol Shelby had a car frame shop make a few dozen frames for Shelby Cobras, they let the frames sit outside for a couple years and rust, and they he went to the government and claimed that he had “found” these frames that had actually been built way back in 1965, and so he wanted to get licensing for them–as 1965 production vehicles. You see, he wanted to sell _huge-engined_ cars without emissions controls, and under current emissions laws that is no longer possible–so he lied. And he got caught, but the goverment let the licensing of the falsified vehicles stand. I can’t remember what the “fake” Cobras typically sold for, it wasn’t as high as the legitimate ones but it was up in the six figures _each_. - I don’t know what scratch-builders are doing now, but a few years back they would pull an entire engine out of a donor vehicle and use that engine as-is–emissions control devices and all–so my guess is that they are satisfying the emissions requirements that way. There is now a law that says that you cannot do anything to an engine that raises its emissions output higher than what it was from the original manufacturer, and soon there will be a law in effect that it is illegal to remove or modify the computerized electrnoic control module from any production-car engine (because the federal goverment wants to use them for automatic _instant_ emissions-checking [as some states do already], as well as to collect criminal-driving and accident data). ~ ---
**Author:** ![justwannano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ab992/32.png) [@justwannano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justwannano)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/9 "2004-07-01T21:17:15Z")
According to my son 4 wheelers can be licenced. How do they do that? ---
**Author:** ![justwannano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ab992/32.png) [@justwannano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justwannano)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/10 "2004-07-01T21:26:43Z")
So OK I just called a local ATV dealer and asked him. In Iowa you can’t licence a ATV(4 wheeler) . The laws for snow mobiles are a little different. At over 50 mpg I think somebody is missing something here. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2004, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-carts/252900/11 "2004-07-01T23:59:02Z")
It depends on the state. In NY, a golf cart can be licensed as a “limited use” vehicle. (Here’s a [photo](http://www.danspapers.com/paper/northfork6.html) of some.) They have to have special modifications (turn signals, for instance) and there are restrictions on what roads they can use (if the speed limit’s \> 35 mph, you can’t use them). We have one at work. According to the NY Times, they are legal in 30 states.