West Virginia Bars Retrofitted Golf Carts, Confines LSVs to 25 mph Town Streets

West Virginia splits small vehicles into two tracks that do not overlap, and a golf cart sits outside both of them. The first track is the low-speed vehicle. Section 17A-1-1(uu) defines one as "a four-wheeled motor vehicle whose attainable speed in one mile on a paved level surface is more than 20 miles per hour but not more than 25 miles per hour." A golf cart is slower than that, which is why the retrofit market exists in other states, and why § 17A-3-2(c) closes it here: the Division may not title or register a homemade low-speed vehicle or a retrofitted golf cart, and the subsection goes further and strips such a vehicle of the low-speed vehicle label outright. The Division's gate is documentary. It registers the vehicle only where the manufacturer's certificate of origin clearly identifies it as a low-speed vehicle, so the answer is decided before the vehicle is ever inspected or driven.

Where a genuine low-speed vehicle may go is narrow. Paragraph (1) of § 17A-3-2(c) confines it to private roads and to public roads and streets "within the corporate limits of a municipality where the speed limit is not more than 25 miles per hour." West Virginia gave no county commission the power to open its roads to low-speed vehicles, so an owner outside a town has private property and nothing else. Nor is there an opt-in ordinance route of the kind Florida and California use: the municipal 25 mph street is open by operation of the statute, and a municipality is not asked to designate or sign it.

Three further conditions ride with registration. The vehicle must meet 49 C.F.R. § 571.500 (2003), the federal low-speed vehicle safety standard, notwithstanding any contrary provision of the West Virginia Code. There is no periodic safety inspection: in lieu of one, the owner certifies under penalty of false swearing, at initial registration and at every renewal, that all lights, brakes, tires and seat belts are in good working condition. And the operator must hold a valid driver's licence, expressly "not an instruction permit", which shuts out the learner-permit teenager who could drive the family car on the same street with a licensed adult aboard.

The second track is the street-legal special purpose vehicle under § 17A-13-1, and it is much broader. Special purpose vehicles there mean all-terrain vehicles, utility terrain vehicles, mini-trucks, pneumatic-tired military vehicles and full-size special purpose-built vehicles. Their default is permission rather than prohibition: an individual may operate one on a street or highway unless the road is a controlled-access system such as an interstate, or unless the county, the municipality or the Division of Natural Resources where the highway is located prohibits them. They may not travel more than 20 miles on a highway displaying centerline pavement markings, they are registered in the same manner as motorcycles and carry a plate the size of a Class G motorcycle plate, and § 17A-13-1(j) sets out sixteen equipment items down to amber turn signals on each side of the front, a speedometer illuminated for night operation and tires with at least 2/32 inches of tread. Mini-trucks may not be operated as street-legal special purpose vehicles on highways constructed under a federal highways program.

The two tracks are kept apart by the closing subsection of § 17A-13-1, which the official Code prints with a capital letter I rather than a lower-case L. Low-speed vehicles as defined in § 17A-1-1 "are not considered special purpose vehicles or street-legal special purpose vehicles under this section." It then grants the one crossing right a low-speed vehicle has outside its 25 mph streets: low-speed vehicles "may cross state routes at traffic lights when the state route does not have a posted speed limit greater than 40 miles per hour." That is a right to cross at a signal, not a right to travel along the route.

Registering a vehicle that does not qualify is not an option a West Virginia owner can force. Section 17A-3-2(c) directs the Division of Motor Vehicles not to title or register a retrofitted golf cart, so the failure point is the counter rather than the roadside. Driving an unregistered cart on a public road is then an offence under § 17A-9-2(a), which forbids operating on any highway a vehicle required to be registered without a valid registration card and plate displayed; a first conviction carries a fine of not more than $500, and a second or subsequent conviction up to $500 or as much as six months in the county or regional jail, or both.

Other chapter 17A violations with no penalty of their own fall under § 17A-11-1 at up to $500, up to six months, or both. A false renewal certification is made under penalty of false swearing by the terms of § 17A-3-2(c)(3) itself. Operating a low-speed vehicle on a municipal street posted above 25 miles per hour, or on any road outside a municipality other than a private one, breaches paragraph (1) of the same subsection. For street-legal special purpose vehicles the enforcement question is local: § 17A-13-1(c)(2) lets the county, the municipality or the Division of Natural Resources prohibit them on a given highway, so the lawful answer for an ATV or UTV changes at a county line in a way the low-speed vehicle rule never does.