But where were the Peachtree

City lawmakers and their lawyers in all these years when they were writing

their ordinances allowing residents to drive golf carts on that "highway"

of theirs? After all, Judge Miller showed how, way back in 1969, the Georgia

Attorney General had ruled that drivers of go-carts on public highways

must have a driver's license.

Instead of reading the law,

some of these lawyers must have been busy denouncing crackpots who write

letters to the editors.

The Coker case seems to me

a pretext for starting to enforce, in an asinine way, a law that's been

on the books for a very long time and which should have been discovered,

and modified, long before Coker came along.

Since the Court of Appeals

did not seem to think that a golf cart path was a highway, it should be

simple to keep pretending that a golf cart path is not a highway until

the legislature can meet and modify the definition of "highway"

shall not be deemed a highway." Because it isn't.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayetteville, Ga.

[email protected]

[The editor replies: One

additional problem in this issue lies in the access routes to the golf

cart paths. In most parts of Peachtree City, cart drivers must navigate

along sometimes extended stretches of city streets until reaching a cart

path access point. Thus, any modification of state law on cart paths also

would have to address the stickier question of unlicensed drivers operating

their vehicles on public streets. Also, cart paths at many points in the

city cross at grade not only city streets but also state highways, which

further complicates any potential local legislation that would have to

supersede general state laws governing state roads.]