Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Writing a lot of letters to the editor exposes their author to being labeled a crackpot, and I have in the past joked with Steve Brown (now mayor of Peachtree City) that he and I seemed to be competing for the local Crackpot Award. At the time, he seemed willing to concede the award to me, but given what's been going on the golf cart paths of Peachtree City lately, I see a lot of competition for that coveted Crackpot Award.

Many people would agree that reading the law can only be a crackpot's idea of fun. That's probably why nobody seems to have read the actual Court of Appeals opinion that's triggered all the PTC hoopla, least of all the Citizen reporter whose front-page article on July 2 stated, "The Georgia Court of Appeals recently determined that a driver's license is required to drive even a golf cart."

I have a copy of the Georgia Court of Appeals June 13 decision in the Coker case in front of me as I write this. Judge Yvette Miller, writing for the Court of Appeals, stated quite simply, "We hold that a driver's license is required to drive a golf cart on public highways ..."

As one reads the case, one learns that the police saw Coker driving a golf cart on a public highway shortly after 1 a.m., and when they turned on the blue lights and siren he immediately drove the cart onto a golf cart path that paralleled the so-called highway. (That highway was probably just a public street, but you know how lawyers write.)

It seems unintelligent to me to fail to notice the difference between a public highway and a golf cart path. What was Coker doing on a public street anyway, when there was a golf cart path right next to him that he could have used? The explanation can be found in the case, as Coker was also convicted of having been driving under the influence at the time.

Our local political figures are not supposed to be under the influence, and they should know the difference between a public highway and a golf cart path. It is clear to me that the Court of Appeals realized the difference between a public highway and a golf cart path, because it noted that Coker drove from one to the other, adding, "[s]ince Coker drove [his golf cart] upon a highway of this State, he was required to have a driver's license."

The Court of Appeals never did hold that driving a golf cart on a golf cart path requires a driver's license. What triggers the driver's license requirement here is driving it on a highway.

So far, it looks as if the Court of Appeals got everything right, doesn't it? But it didn't, because Court of Appeals judges are busy people who don't have time to read the law any more than some of us have time to read their opinions.

What did Court of Appeals Judge Miller miss in all of this? She apparently failed to read Georgia Code section 40-1-1(19) which defines "highway" as "the entire width between the boundary lines of every way publicly maintained when any part thereof is open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel."

If she had read that, she would have realized that the big distinction she made in her opinion between public highways and golf cart paths was nonsense. When a golf cart path is publicly maintained and open to the use of the public, it becomes a highway!

In the famous novel "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens, one hears Mr. Bumble say, "If the law supposes that, the law is a ass, a idiot." In the circumstances, I couldn't agree more.

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" by stating, quite simply, "but a golf cart path maintained by a city shall not be deemed a highway." Because it isn't.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayetteville, Ga.

cypaquin@msn.com

[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.]