Who knew? Golf carts are growing up and sticking their cute little noses out onto the highway.

Apparently some lobby managed to get the highway rules revised so that a new category of cars is emerging. The industry calls these “neighborhood cars.” You can drive them at up to 25 mile per hour (Oh yeah like anybody is going to enforce that!) on any road posted at 35 miles per hour or less. It’s amazing once you start looking how the vast majority of roads are posted at 35 or less. There are 2 and three lane highways around here posted at 35; i.e. “parkways.”

They had one of these at the office park I used to work in and the staff would zip all over the campus in it. These are the things you seeing going up and down the corridors in airports carrying the lazy, lame, and elderly. Micro bus lines. I’ve yet to see that in a big mall, but I bet it happens in some parts of the country. These are also the all terrain things with the big wheels you see “sportsmen” using to add a little excitement to the beach or national park. I gather they are popular on island resorts in Maine and in other gated communities.

Some of these are all electric; like the blue one shown.. Some are even solar powered. And there are bicycle variants that are delightfully weird; like the red one pictured.

I wonder what might happen if you put 500 of these in Boston and mixed in the tech from this European bike rental/sharing scheme.