DC Registers Factory-Built LSVs, Never Golf Carts

Two separate questions get confused here, so take them apart. The first is whether a golf cart may be driven on District streets. The second is what the District does with a purpose-built low-speed vehicle. The answers are different.

On golf carts, the District's silence is total and it is provable rather than merely assumed. A full-text search of all 24,113 sections of the D.C. Official Code returns exactly one occurrence of the phrase golf cart, in the definitions section of the traffic chapter, D.C. Code § 50-2201.02(2), which defines an all-terrain vehicle and then provides that the terms all-terrain vehicle and ATV shall not include golf carts, riding lawnmowers, or tractors. There is no authorising section, no designation power for the Mayor or the District Department of Transportation to open particular streets, and no cart permit or plate. Title 18 of the DCMR is equally silent: across all 484 sections of the vehicles-and-traffic title, the word golf does not appear at all.

That single carve-out matters more than it looks. D.C. Code § 50-2201.04b(a)(1) makes it unlawful both to operate an all-terrain vehicle or dirt bike on public property, including any public space in the District, and to park, stand or stop one there, subject only to a narrow exception in (a)(2) for someone in the process of immediately loading the machine for transport to another jurisdiction or to private property in the District. Subsection (b) provides that ATVs and dirt bikes shall not be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Because § 50-2201.02(2) pulls golf carts out of the ATV definition, a cart is not caught by that express ban. It is left instead in the ordinary motor-vehicle regime, which is where it fails. A golf cart is a motor vehicle under § 50-2201.02(11), since that definition reaches all vehicles propelled by internal-combustion engines, electricity, or steam. D.C. Code § 50-1501.04(a)(1) then makes it unlawful to operate any motor vehicle upon any public highway of the District if it is not registered and if it does not have the required identification tags attached and displayed. Registration runs through a certificate of title, and 18 DCMR § 401.4 requires an application for a new vehicle to be accompanied by a certificate of manufacture. A golf cart carries no certificate of origin describing a federally compliant on-road vehicle, so the title never issues, the registration never issues, and the street use is unlawful for want of a tag rather than by a named prohibition.

The low-speed vehicle track is genuinely different. Section 9901.1 of Title 18 defines a low-speed vehicle as a four-wheeled motor vehicle whose speed attainable in one mile is more than twenty miles per hour and not more than twenty-five miles per hour on a paved level surface, with a gross vehicle weight rating of less than three thousand pounds. Note the lower bound. A machine that cannot exceed 20 miles per hour is below the definition, which is why an ordinary golf cart is not an LSV in the District even though the two look alike. Section 757, added by Final Rulemaking published at 57 DCR 5243, 5246 on June 18, 2010, then sets three conditions: compliance with Federal Motor Safety Standard No. 500 at 49 C.F.R. § 571.500, a manufacturer's certificate of origin clearly identifying the vehicle as a low-speed vehicle, and a prohibition on aftermarket conversion of manufactured non-compliant vehicles into low-speed vehicles that do not meet the federal standards. In practice § 757.2 is the gate: the paperwork that gets an LSV titled and registered is the same paperwork a golf cart cannot produce, and § 757.3 forecloses building your way into the class.

The District never adopted the roadway-class restriction most states pair with an LSV rule, because it does not need one. Under 18 DCMR § 2200.6 the maximum lawful speed on all District streets and highways, unless otherwise posted, is twenty miles per hour, and § 2200.7 sets fifteen miles per hour in alleys. An LSV's twenty-five mile per hour ceiling already sits above the default limit. The general duties still apply: § 2201.2 requires a vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic to keep to the right-hand lane or as close as practicable to the right curb, and § 2201.13 lets the Director regulate or prohibit the use of any controlled-access roadway by any class of traffic found incompatible with the normal and safe movement of traffic.

One further equipment duty catches anything slower still. Section 739.1(a) defines a slow-moving vehicle as any motor vehicle designed for operation at speeds not in excess of fifteen miles per hour, and § 739.3 requires any slow-moving vehicle using the public highways of the District, day or night, to display a slow-moving vehicle emblem. Section 739.4 specifies that emblem as a fluorescent yellow-orange triangle with a dark red reflective border conforming so far as practical to standard ASAE S276.2, revised March 1967. Be careful reading § 739.3 itself: it points the reader to "§ 738.4" for the emblem, but § 738.4 is part of the air-conditioning equipment rule and says nothing about emblems. The specification is in § 739.4, immediately below.

Driving an unregistered golf cart on a District street is prosecuted as an unregistered-vehicle offence, not as a cart offence. C. 04(b)(1) provides that a person violating the registration subchapter or the regulations promulgated under it is, on conviction, subject to a fine of not more than $1,000 or imprisonment of not more than 30 days, or both, with prosecution in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on information filed by the Attorney General. 00. C. 04b(f) subjects the machine itself to forfeiture under Chapter 3 of Title 41. Subsection (e) puts prosecution in the hands of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. C. 02.