Sad News: Bank Exec Dies After Falling Out of Golf Cart

Very sad – and we’ll never hear the post-autopsy side of the story – but he was playing in a fundraiser event where sobriety isn’t always job one. Was he drinking ? How about the guy driving ? Was it just an accident where they hit something and he got bounced out ?

That course is only a few miles from where I’m sitting now at work.

I hadn’t heard the story, but typically these fundraising events do involve a LOT of alcohol (as court said) and I can’t help but suspect that. If not him, then possibly the driver.

I played in a work league at Rancocas several years back, and it didn’t seem to be the kind of place that would discourage drinking, if you know what I mean. Very unfortunate for all involved.

… and the thing is people don’t realize it, so will always suspect that copious amounts of alcohol were involved.

A couple of weeks ago I was playing in an event with my sister. It had been pouring rain and we were on a hilly course. It was quite early in the day and our group hadn’t yet started to abuse alcohol. At one point we found ourselves going down a steep hill on an narrow slice of cart path, with another cart about five yards ahead of us. We weren’t going overly fast …just the pace one normally goes in a cart. The cart ahead of us lightly applied their breaks upon reaching a swerve in the path. With that, the cart slid across the path like on a sheet of ice. The shocked driver instinctively put more force on the break and the cart tumbled on to it’s side. We had to applied our breaks to avoid crashing into the upturned cart and its trapped passengers so our cart also slid, nearly going over the cliff on the side. Miraculously no one was too severely hurt, but It was definitely a brush with death or at least severe injuy This was in no way related to irresponsible driving or alchohol use. But I sure there would have been speculation that it was and rumors would have ensued. I’ll definitely be more careful from now on.

I know I’ve done some dumb things in golf carts, and I’m just lucky I didn’t get hurt. Definitely stuff that I shouldn’t have done and knew better. Even worse is that alcohol has never been a factor.

I was riding in a cart with my brother once and it was kind of a fast one. He decided he was going to do a Dukes of Hazzard maneuver and skid the cart sideways. Of course, the wheels caught and the cart dumped on its side and launched us out. Luckily it was one of those without a roof so he just piled on top of me.

In one that was my fault, when I was working in golf course maintenance, I was watering fairways. The 10th hole had a huge, fairly steep hill with a couple of ripples in it. It was used heavily in winter by sledders, but that’s another story. So I head straight down this thing in a fast maintenance cart and hit the one bump and go airborne. I landed so hard that all the sprinkler heads flew out the back (there was a dump body instead of a bag rack on the back).

Stupidity, no question. But having driven carts for work and play for 15 years, the instances like golfgirl described are very rare in my experience and any time I’ve had any kind of close call in a cart, it was my doing or the doing of the driver. In general, people driving alertly (which is a definite problem on cart paths and roadways) will have a minuscule chance of accident or injury.