ACROSS THE COUNTRY
In This Atlanta Suburb, Teens Taste Freedom at 10 M.P.H.
In Peachtree City, Ga., golf carts are everywhere, giving young people in particular an early chance to take life by the wheel.
WHY WE’RE HERE
We’re exploring how America defines itself one place at a time. In the car-dependent sprawl of the Atlanta suburbs, Peachtree City, Ga., has gone all-in on an alternative (available in electric or gas).
Rick Rojas and Gabriela Bhaskar covered many of Peachtree City’s 100-plus miles of pathways in a rented golf cart.
A regular golf cart has no turn signals, no radio, no protection from the elements other than a thin roof and rain flaps. Press the pedal to the floor and it can maybe — maybe — accelerate to 15 miles per hour.
Still, grip the steering wheel. Feel the wind and the sun on a crisp afternoon, the cart hugging the curves as it picks up speed on a smoothly paved pathway, one of your parents beside you, your friends hanging on in the back seat. If you are 12, commanding that cart feels like power. It feels like freedom.
“You had that little sense of adventure,” said Caroline Lawson, 17, thinking back a few years to her earliest experiences driving a golf cart. “It’s just that little sense of, ‘Whee!’”
That’s growing up in Peachtree City, Ga.