Missouri Golf Carts and Low-Speed Vehicles: Two Separate Road Regimes

Section 304.034 is an enabling statute, not a general permission. It opens "notwithstanding any other law to the contrary" and gives the governing body of any municipality power, by resolution or ordinance, to allow golf carts and motorized wheelchairs on any street or highway under that governing body's jurisdiction. Absent that local action, a Missouri golf cart has no road privileges at all. Where a city has acted, three limits still bind regardless of what the ordinance says. The cart may not be operated at any time on any state or federal highway, except that it may be driven onto such a highway in order to cross a portion of the state highway system that intersects a municipal street. It may not cross any highway at an intersection where the highway being crossed carries a posted speed limit of more than forty-five miles per hour. And under Section 304.034.2 it must be equipped with adequate brakes and must meet any other safety requirements the governing body imposes, while remaining outside the registration provisions of chapter 301. The section was enacted by H.B. 683 and has been in force since August 28, 2009.

The definition does real work. Section 304.034.3 confines the term to a motor vehicle designed and manufactured for operation on a golf course for sporting or recreational purposes that is not capable of exceeding speeds of twenty miles per hour. A lifted, rewired cart geared past twenty is outside the definition and gets no benefit from the municipal ordinance, and a purpose-built neighborhood electric vehicle was never inside it.

Missouri counties are simply absent from Section 304.034, and the omission is deliberate rather than accidental. The two neighbouring off-road provisions in the same chapter both reach counties: Section 304.013.1(5) lets the governing bodies of counties issue special permits to licensed drivers for all-terrain vehicle use on county roads, and Section 304.032.1(5) does the same for utility vehicles, each with a fifteen dollar fee the county may collect and retain. Section 304.034 names only the governing body of a municipality. The practical result is that a resident of unincorporated Jefferson County or Christian County has no route to lawful golf cart use on the county road outside the house, even though the county could permit a utility vehicle on that same road.

A license is still needed. Section 304.034.3 calls a golf cart a motor vehicle, and Section 302.020.1(1) makes it unlawful for any person, except those expressly exempted by Section 302.080, to operate any vehicle upon any highway in this state without a valid license. Section 302.020.3 grades that offense as a class D misdemeanor for a first violation, a class A misdemeanor for a second and a class E felony for a third or subsequent violation. What Section 304.034 does not impose is insurance: unlike Section 304.032.1(6), which requires anyone operating a utility vehicle under a municipal ordinance to maintain proof of financial responsibility under Section 303.160 or equivalent coverage, and unlike Sections 304.013.3 and 304.032.3, which require a valid operator's or chauffeur's license and cap speeds under thirty and forty-five miles per hour respectively, the golf cart section leaves those conditions to the city through the "any other safety requirements" clause. Ordinance terms therefore vary from town to town, and the ordinance is the document to read.

The low-speed vehicle regime under Section 304.029 is the more permissive of the two and needs no local vote. Every person operating a low-speed vehicle is granted all the rights and subject to all the duties applicable to the driver of any other motor vehicle, except for the special regulations in the section. Those regulations are: no operation on a street or highway posted above thirty-five miles per hour, though crossing such a road is expressly allowed; exemption from Sections 307.350 to 307.402, the safety inspection provisions, for purposes of titling and registration; financial responsibility as required by chapter 303, whose minimum limits under Section 303.190.2(2) are $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 for bodily injury in any one accident and $25,000 for property damage; a valid chapter 302 driver's license for each operator; and manufacture in compliance with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration standard at 49 CFR 571.500. The definition is the federal one at 49 CFR 571.3, which describes 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 under 3,000 pounds. That twenty mile per hour floor is exactly why a golf cart, capped at twenty by Section 304.034.3, can never qualify as a low-speed vehicle. Section 304.029.8 preserves local power in one direction only: counties and municipalities may adopt more stringent ordinances where the governing body determines it necessary in the interest of public safety, and the Missouri Department of Transportation may prohibit low-speed vehicles on any highway under its jurisdiction on the same finding.

570 supplies one for both: any person who violates a provision of chapter 304 for which no specific punishment is provided shall be fined not less than five dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, or imprisoned in the county jail for a term not exceeding one year, or both. Driving a golf cart on a street the city has not opened to carts, taking one onto a state highway other than to cross at a municipal street intersection, crossing a road posted above forty-five miles per hour, or running a low-speed vehicle on a road posted above thirty-five all fall under that provision.

3, a class D misdemeanor for a first offense escalating to a class E felony on a third. 303 available in lieu of points once in any thirty-six month period. 2 makes any additional safety requirement the city imposes part of the lawful operating condition.