Part 2: Golf Carts Aren’t Toys

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series from The Citizen examining golf cart safety in Peachtree City and what the city’s decades of experience may teach Fayette County as plans move forward to expand a connected path network beyond its borders.
https://thecitizen.com/2026/07/08/part-1-golf-cart-crashes-are-rare-injuries-arent/

When Heather Harding’s golf cart rolled onto its side 10 years ago this summer, she never imagined the crash would change the rest of her life.

Pinned beneath the cart as it slid across the pavement, Harding suffered catastrophic injuries to her right leg. Battery acid leaked onto her skin while firefighters worked to free her. She spent a month in Grady Memorial Hospital, underwent 10 surgeries over the next several years, and was told she might never walk again without a brace or cane.

Today, she walks.

Not perfectly, she says, but well enough to enjoy life, grateful her injuries weren’t even worse.

“I just try to focus on what I do have instead of what I don’t have,” Harding said.

Harding’s crash happened a decade ago, before the current five-year data provided to The Citizen. But the more recent numbers show crashes like hers are not anomalies. From 2021 through the first half of 2026, Peachtree City police recorded 299 reported golf cart crashes. Of those, 122 resulted in at least one injury—about two out of every five reported crashes, according to Capt. Jamie McDowell, who oversees the department’s Traffic Division.

For Harding, those numbers are anything but abstract.

Harding doesn’t blame Peachtree City’s golf cart paths.

She doesn’t even blame the lack of seat belts.

In fact, she believes a seat belt probably would not have prevented her own injuries because her legs were trapped beneath the overturned cart.

Instead, Harding believes the conversation about golf cart safety is much larger.

“People treat golf carts too much like a toy,” she said.

For years after her accident, Harding attended City Council meetings urging officials to focus on enforcing existing laws, educating drivers and addressing excessive speeds rather than assuming golf carts are inherently safe simply because they travel more slowly than automobiles.

She believes speed limits on golf carts should be enforced more consistently and questions whether modified carts capable of exceeding legal speeds should be operating on city paths. She also believes more public awareness of serious crashes could help residents better understand the risks.

“I think we need to publicize accidents so people can learn,” she said. “We avoid future accidents.”

That perspective resonated with Peachtree City Councilwoman Laura Johnson.

Johnson, the mother of five children, said she has seat belts installed on her own golf cart and used car seats when her children were young. Personally, she believes those precautions make sense.

But she is reluctant to support new city regulations without evidence showing they would improve safety.

“I would need information showing me and studies that it actually is the most safe,” Johnson said.

Johnson also questioned what standards the city would rely on if it required seat belts or child restraints.

Automobiles are subject to extensive federal safety standards, she noted. Golf carts are not.

“What would that look like for golf carts?” she asked.

Mayor Kim Learnard expressed a similar philosophy.

While acknowledging that golf cart injuries are serious, Learnard said the city has historically placed responsibility on parents and individual drivers rather than government regulation.

“We leave it up to parents,” Learnard said. “They take on the liability every time they get behind the wheel of a golf cart.”

Learnard also questioned how such an ordinance would work in practice.

How would a child be defined?

Would the requirement be based on age or weight?

Who would enforce it?

What type of restraint would qualify?

Those practical questions, she said, make the issue more complicated than it may first appear.

For Harding, however, those questions should not prevent the conversation.

She isn’t calling for one specific law.

She isn’t even convinced seat belts are the answer to every crash.

Instead, she hopes residents simply begin viewing golf carts differently.

Not as toys.

Not as harmless neighborhood conveniences.

But as vehicles capable of changing a life in an instant.

Despite their differing views on regulation, the people interviewed for this series shared one point of agreement:

Golf carts deserve the same respect people give any other vehicle.

In Part 3, The Citizen will examine the safety equipment already available to golf cart owners, what it costs, and what families can do today to better protect themselves.