Concerned Cuttyhunkers Look to Get Golf Carts Under Control

Over on Cuttyhunk, cars take a backseat to islanders’ preferred vehicle: a golf cart. 

With just two miles of road on the tiny isle, the carts are ideal for zipping from the ferry landing to the 190 or so homes and back frequently, helping residents and tourists alike haul their groceries, luggage and other essentials from the boat.

They also provide quick passage to the island’s beaches, the church, the raw bar and the town hall that all sit on the square-mile dot of land just off Aquinnah. 

But town officials worry that the proliferation of golf carts over the years, along with seemingly growing accounts of reckless driving, could cause a serious accident. The select board has been discussing the issue in recent weeks and has been talking with its lawyer about what can be done to keep people safe.

“We need to do something about it,” said Sarah Berry, chair of the select board for the town of Gosnold, which includes Cuttyhunk and the chain of neighboring islands. “All of our concern is the safety of the driver.” 

A sought-after summer destination, the Cuttyhunk population goes from just a handful of hearty year-rounders in the offseason to several hundred people come summer. There are some cars and trucks on the island, but just about every household has at least one golf cart and there are several golf cart rental businesses that supply them to visiting tourists. 

Ms. Berry said that the issue has been talked about for years, but for the most part, by the time the people get fed up enough to do anything, the season has ended and the urge dissipates. 

“We have eight weeks of craziness,” she said. “Then it calms down again and we don’t care.” 

But she and others have said that people seem to be driving a little faster, packing their carts with a few too many people and failing to stop at the island’s intersections. 

“It gets pretty dangerous at the intersection level,” said Ms. Berry. “We’re trying to work on rules that people will respect.” 

The board brought in Vineyard-based attorney Zeb Landsman to talk about golf carts at a meeting in late March. The difficulty in regulating golf carts on Cuttyhunk is that they technically aren’t allowed to be driven at all on the roads. 

Because they aren’t allowed by the letter of the law, the town has few regulatory levers at its disposal to handle the concerns. 

“It’s a perennial issue,” said Stewart Young, another member of the select board. “It seems the golf cart population is increasing and with it comes issues of noise, safety and crowding.”

The town doesn’t want to move away from golf carts; turning people to cars or other options could crush the charm of the island and create even more problems, officials said. 

“We haven’t figured out a way to deal with it,” Mr. Young said.

The town has been looking at Hatfield, a small community in Hampshire County that also relies on golf carts, as well as locales in South Carolina and Florida. Hatfield petitioned the state legislature last year to make a special exception that would allow golf carts to be used on public ways. 

The bill wasn’t approved and the legislature resolved to study the issue. 

Gosnold officials don’t seem ready to ask lawmakers on Beacon Hill for special allowances to make golf carts legal on Cuttyhunk, in order to potentially regulate then, but Ms. Berry said she hopes that something can come to town meeting this year. 

Mr. Young has considered a stronger advisory that reminds residents and clues visitors in to the need for safety. 

“It’s something we can’t regulate,” he said. “But maybe we can find ways to be more persuasive.” 

Dale Lynch, as the operator of the “Golf Cart Hospital” on Cuttyhunk, has been fixing carts for the last 20 years and has been following the discussions closely. 

He estimated that there were just under 200 golf carts on the island, a majority of which belong to summer residents. He said this problem is not a new one. 

Decades before golf carts arrived on Cuttyhunk’s shores, the town had to deal with old, unregistered cars. If an islander got wind that a registry official was on the ferry from New Bedford, a call would be made to one of the island inns, and the vehicles would disappear from the streets, according to Mr. Lynch. 

Golf carts were introduced to the island in the mid 1980s by a Yamaha dealer in Swansea, and became a hit.

“They were an immediate success and pretty soon most every home (both summer and year-round) used a golf [cart] for its low impact and utilitarian use,” Mr. Lynch said.

Mr. Lynch felt the controversy was driven by a minority of summer residents who insist on vilifying the tourism business on the island. 

“I feel that this same group believes that Cuttyhunk is some sort of private enclave, instead of an actual town where people and visitors need to get around,” he said. 

He has urged the town to have clearer markings at the intersections that could get the message across. He also affixes rules of the road to his fleet of rental carts, and sent the placards to the town as a suggestion. 

“Maybe a hybrid version of these operating rules could be adopted and be distributed to the community a couple times each summer to every home,” he wrote in a letter to the board late last month. 

For some, the rise in golf cart use marks a change in the old ways of Cuttyhunk. An informal survey queried year-rounders, summer residents, boaters and others about the state of the island, and drew more than 250 responses — many of which centered around golf carts. 

“The group consensus was that Cuttyhunk has too many people during busy times for the infrastructure and personnel available and there is a need to both educate and police visitors and residents about common sense rules and expected behaviors,” Nancy Wilder, one of the organizers of the survey, wrote to the select board. 

“The pressure on the island created by the numbers of visitors creates a need to reduce risk by setting baseline expectations of behavior,” she continued. 

Some in the survey raised the possibility of requiring registration. With the exception of higher speed carts, this rule is hard to enforce because golf carts aren’t required to have registrations under state law. 

Mr. Young said the town could require the street-legal version of golf carts, which would need seatbelts and a registration. These types of vehicles can be seen rolling around Edgartown in the summer, but they are more expensive and undercut what made golf carts so popular on Cuttyhunk in the first place. 

“I wonder whether the eventual solution will be to require [people] to have more souped-up, and therefore street-legal, vehicles, which creates a burden,” Mr. Young said. 

Some on the island are wistful about years past, when people largely traveled by foot. Maybe, if the town could highlight that older culture, and enact some rules, things could be a little better for everyone, Ms. Berry said. 

“People could be more careful,” she said. “No one is trying to make people feel bad. We just want safety.” 

This article appears in April 10, 2026.