The Dunstan Golf Club has an aging membership which means electric golf carts are being used more frequently to negotiate around the Clyde course.

The problem is, a few elderly members are also using them as transport options to and from their houses, and local police are getting annoyed.

The club’s been making headlines for all the wrong reasons lately, so Clyde-based Constable Graham Perkins decided it was time to have a word to the president.

Senior Constable Perkins has come across members zipping across the main road on several occasions, and just recently a member failed to give way to traffic.   

On another occasion later at night, the same member was breath tested and given a warning.

“They are taking the piss. Nowhere else does it. You don’t see it anywhere else but at Clyde. Even on the Rail Trail,” Snr Const Perkins said.

New club president Steve McGregor acknowledged the actions of just a few people out of more than 400 members were letting the club down, but said there were no easy answers.

The club has four carts that members can hire but space in storage for only eight, and desperately needs a bigger shed. Some of the younger members brought their carts on trailers, but for the rest of them, the 5-6km walk around the 18-hole course for an elderly person was starting to take its toll - hence the illegal travel.

And hauling them onto trailers using ramps was still too much effort physically for an older member to handle by themselves at home.

“We’d like to be able to build another storage facility to house another 10.”

As a result of the recent activity, the club was introducing new rules which included anyone taking their golf cart offsite had to be sober.   

The committee was encouraging members to park up or take their carts home, and then come back for a social drink afterwards.

Electric golf carts over 50kw were classed as a motor vehicle if used on the road, and subject to the same provisions, with regard to registration, seat belts and warrant of fitness.  

But the buggies were just a simple structure not designed for road use, had no doors, blinkers or seat belts, with just a basic stop/go pedal in the front - in fact, most fit people could probably run faster than these things.

Police said anyone found driving them on the road would be prosecuted if committing offences, and this included along the grass verge outside the golf club.

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