A day before Dmitry Sitkovetsky was to perform at a concert in Napa Valley in July, the renowned violinist and conductor lost control of the golf cart he was driving around a local vineyard and flipped over. According to local press reports, he then rolled down a hillside, fracturing his left ankle and tearing a shoulder ligament. Freak accident? These days, not exactly.

 

Medical researchers in Columbus, Ohio report in a recent study that injuries from golf cart accidents like this one have soared in recent years, to an estimated 13,411 cases in 2006, a 132 percent jump over the estimated 5,772 cases in 1990. There are several reasons for the spike, say the scientists at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, including the growing use of golf carts in places like airports, prisons, college campuses, office parks, gated communities, and yes, even hospitals.

 

“They’re no longer being used just on golf courses,” says Lara McKenzie, a senior author on the study that appeared in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Other factors: Newer models are able to go faster than ever before—up to 40 miles per hour in some cases, McKenzie says. And as battery lives can last for more than 40 miles, these vehicles are spending more time on the road, simply raising the probability an accident will happen, researchers say.

 

“It’s like driving a car without any doors,” says McKenzie, who is an assistant professor at the institute’s Center for Injury Research and Policy. (The report, likely the first comprehensive analysis of national trends in emergency room treatments for golf cart injuries, excludes fatalities as many of the worst cases bypass the ER).

 

Among the injuries, the most common type (47.7 percent) is soft tissue damage, including sprains, strains, contusions, and abrasions. Fractures (22.3 percent) account for the second most common type of injury, followed by lacerations (15.5 percent).

 

Of particular concern to the researchers is that children under 16 suffer nearly a third (31.2 percent) of these injuries. Infants and young children are allowed to ride in carts and children 16 and over can operate them on private property. But children are more likely than adults to fall out of the carts, the study says, and these falls are linked to higher rates of head and neck injuries as well as hospitalization. Problem is, many golf carts don’t have seat belts. Instead, the hip restraints that are typically attached to the side of golf cart seats, while okay for adults, can be insufficient in keeping smaller children from sliding out of carts during turns, the study says. A cart traveling as slow as 11 miles per hour can eject a passenger during a turn, the researchers say, citing a separate study. “Golf carts were not designed for children to ride in or operate,” McKenzie says. Another worry: golf cart operators don’t need a driver’s license or safety training.

 

The study did not single out any manufacturers. The National Golf Car Manufacturers Association said in a statement it “strongly discourages” operation of golf “cars,” as it calls them, by anyone other than licensed drivers. Fred Somers, the association’s spokesman, said golf carts have one tenth the injury rate of horseback riding and one third that of automobiles. The idea that golf carts are unsafe “is simply not true,” he said. Kathleen Searle, a spokeswoman for E-Z-GO, which calls itself “the world’s largest manufacturer of golf cars and utility vehicles,” says “golf car accidents, similar to automobiles, result principally from negligent driving and operator error rather than mechanical or other failures of the vehicle.” The Augusta, Georgia-based company’s latest models have the most advanced braking system ever designed for these types of vehicles, allowing them to stop more quickly and smoothly and preventing them from rolling away should the cart be left unattended, she says. “Safety ranks among our highest priorities when designing and building E-Z-Go vehicles,” says Searle, adding that vehicles also come affixed with decals reminding drivers about safe operation.

 

Although The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued guidelines for all-terrain vehicles, including the passage of laws requiring the use of motorcycle-style helmets and prohibiting the use by children under 16, the academy’s ATV policy statement doesn’t specifically mention golf carts—a move sought by the golf cart study’s authors. But Dr. Denise Dowd, a spokeswoman on the academy’s Committee on Injury, Violence, and Poison Prevention, says the principles are the same. “Anything that would be pertinent to a three- or four-wheeled motorized vehicle would be pertinent to the golf cart situation,” says Dowd, who is co-director of the Center for Childhood Safety at The Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.

 

The Nationwide Children’s Hospital researchers also want to see better safety features in the vehicles, including seat belts and brakes on all four wheels. Rear-wheel-only brake carts are more likely to fishtail, they say, leading to accidents. Putting policies in place at the state and federal level, such as limiting the age of passengers to 6 and older and drivers to 16 and older would also go a long way, McKenzie says. “The more than doubling of the number of injuries in the 17-year period we looked at is just unheard of,” says McKenzie. “We look at all types of injuries—bunk bed injuries, ladder injuries, etcetera—and we’ve never seen an increase like this.”