Seven-Year-Old Boy Fined for Driving Golf Cart

If you're 7, Don't mess with Texas...

I would have locked the kid up, just to make sure that his parents smartened up.

Kids driving carts are possibly the most annoying thing i see on the course.

If they can bust us for being drunk in a cart, an underage driver needs to be taught a serious lesson.

7 year old is a bit young to be using that type of strong handed tactics. Maybe wait till the kid is about 12 years old.

The kid wasn't driving the cart on a course

Gotta agree with @billchao on this one.

your memory is failing you in your old age phil. If I were anchoring (which I am not), no laws are being broken. Hell, I would not even be breaking any rules at this point. Golf carts are considered motor vehicles, and if you are letting a kid drive it anywhere other than your farm, you are breaking the law.

Depends on the state you are living in. Some states have allowed communities the right to use golf carts on local roadways. So, in some instances they are not breaking the law. Not as black and white as you think.

Doesn't matter. The kid doesn't care about the money. The kid is being traumatized by an authority figure. The story states the kid was scared because he thought he was going to jail. The kid had no clue what a ticket is. All the kid did was associate the cop with is going to jail. In that regard the police officer did a disservice to the kid. Instead of calmly explaining the situation to the kid, in a way of making it a learning experience, the cop went for scare tactics that would likely do more harm than good.

This is just deplorable. Instead of going straight to the parent you are going to punish the kid to punish the parent. Do you know how idiotic that sounds. Maybe you don't have kids. What if you were the one speeding, and a cop decides to take your kid out of the back seat and ship him off to jail, to punish you.

Seriously, that is just messed up.

Around here I would say the cops do a pretty good job of using what most of us would consider "common sense".

What they would do would depend on how secluded the road or street is and/or whether the cart is "street legal".

Almost all of the kids on our little country road have their own golf cart and if a cop happens to patrol by they would just wave at them (unless they are doing something stupid) because chances are their kids also have a cart.

Interesting perspectives, I see it as the cop did the parents a favor and might have helped avoid a tragic situation in the future.

If mom got the ticket, the incident wouldn't have made an impression on little CJ.  As others said, the cop and all of us know CJ isn't going to pay the fine, but by ticketing CJ, he made CJ take responsibility for what he was doing, in my opinion that's a good thing, even for a 7 year old.

The event might discourage CJ from jumping in the golf cart and taking it for a spin next time mom and dad go out.

Some PD are told to abide by the law when giving tickets (the "no broken windows" policy, i.e., every violation is ticketed by the written law)

Perhaps the law says the driver gets the ticket, no matter what age.

If on a public street, the child probably did not know he was violating the law, but it does not matter.

As to the parent, it's one thing to let a 7 yr old ride a golf cart with you in the cart; it's another to allow the child to drive on a public street.

Little Johnny is probably scarred for life and will need counseling... ... or at least a lollipop....

The same thing happened near where I live. It's a small town, farming community. The local metro police wrote a ticket to a youngster who was driving a golf cart to school during a rain storm. He also had some friends in the cart with him. It went to traffic court, where the judge tossed it out because it was a battery operated vehicle. At the same time, that same judge also made it legal for folks in the community to drive these electric carts, and gas powered ATVs in and around town because they were considered farming tools. His reasoning was if you could drive large farming machines on the local roads, then smaller carts should be legal also. However, in the interests of up holding local/state laws, each person in the cart was assessed community service time for not wearing their seat belts.

That judge is a joke. It is not his duty to create new laws by judicial review. If the people wanted to ride around town in the ATV's or golf carts, then they should propose it to the legislature.

Large farming machines are probably much safer than a golf cart. Lets say a car hits a large farming vehicle compared to a golf cart. I think the person in the large farming vehicle is much safer.

I would tend to agree with you that the man probably over stepped his responsibilities. However, being the rural community that it is, he has to go through an election every 2 years. He has held that judicial job for over 40 years. (20+ elections won) What you, or I may think means very little. The voters in the community are happy with his work, which is all that really matters for them, and him..