feature article
jan
2019
IN
THE
VILLAGES
GOLF CARTS NEARLY OUTNUMBER PEOPLE
BUT GOLF CART SEAT BELTS
ARE RARE
W
hen John Long first
moved to The Villages
from Virginia in 2013,
he noticed golf carts
zooming past him left and right
on the roads.
One, after the other, after the
other.
The carts are hard to miss.
The Villages, a retirement
community where most of the
inhabitants are over the age of
60, is home to approximately
51,000 people and more than
50,000 golf carts, according to
Babiarz Law Firm of The Village.
However, his cart has a seatbelt.
WUFT News visited a popular
shopping center where the
parking lot had a designated
golf cart parking area. Of the 16
carts there, three in four of them
did not have seatbelts installed.
For 35 years, he worked as a body man in Virginia Beach,
Va. before retiring to The Villages. Once in Sumter County,
he noticed a lack of seatbelts in the popular mode of trans-
portation and decided to take out his tools once again.
Long put out an ad in the newspaper for an installation ser-
vice and began receiving calls within the week. On average,
he installs 20 seatbelts each week
With thousands of installations under his belt, Long
frequently runs into past customers who thank him for
helping to keep them safe.
“Just last week, someone pulled up next to me at a stop-
light,” he said. “They said to me, ‘Your seat belts saved my
life.’”
Approximately 17,000 golf cart crashes and accidents
requiring a hospital visit occur annually nationwide,
according to the United States Consumer Product Safety
Commission. The Villages Department of Safety reported
responding to at least 86 accidents involving golf carts in
2018. Sixty-three of those involved injuries. The depart-
ment did not provide how many of those involved fatali-
ties.
JANUARY 2019
5