When is enough, enough?

I understand the fun of riding golf carts in Port Aransas, but with fun, you need to accept some responsibility. We have privately owned golf carts and rental golf carts, and I don’t dislike them, but I don’t like the fact that children are being turned loose on them without licensed drivers, or that they are packed full of people. It is unsafe. I feel they should not be on the streets after dark, and more rules need to be imposed for their use.

About three weeks ago, my 31 year-old son, Joey, rode his bike from his house on Avenue A to Bilmore’s. On his way back, he was run off the road by a rental golf cart for kicks, and they hollered back,” That’s what you get!” That was the last thing he remembered before he hit the ground. They left him unconscious and bleeding.

A man from LugNutz happened to be coming down the road as my son, who was disoriented, was trying to get his mangled bicycle off the ground. The man wrapped his beach towel around my son’s head to stop the bleeding, and offered to take him to EMS or a hospital. He took him to the house. Joey insisted on taking a shower because he didn’t want anyone to see him bloody. I took him to the hospital. He had a broken nose in two places, cuts around his nose and below his lip along with lots of cuts and bruises and two lightly fractured ribs. He also was given 10 stitches throughout his face. All he could say to me was, “Mom, what if that would have been a small child on his bicycle instead of me? It could have killed him.”

Golf cart owners and rental agencies should be held responsible for the actions taken by the drivers of their golf carts and also the driving drunk on golf carts needs to stop.

Patricia Hodges Cartwright Port Aransas

Tragedy averted

A golden moment could have turned tragic.

A beautiful, little red-haired child was crammed in between two older children on a full golf cart I was behind the other day. They were waving and laughing and having a perfect moment; but those kids’ faces turned from gleeful to horrified in seconds. The driver was hitting bumps in the road, attempted to turn from Cotter onto Alister in front of a truck; both vehicles swerved and he turned again recklessly onto a side street!

Dear driver, what were you thinking? Or were you? Thankfully, those kids were holding on to the side rails and to that little guy with all they had. The cart almost turned over.

Thank you, (South Jetty reporter) Dan Parker, for your article. Thank you to the police department for trying to educate people on the law.

Pam Ford Port Aransas