Golf Cart Rollovers
According to the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), there are approximately 15,000 golf cart related injuries requiring emergency room treatment in the US each year. Some 10% of these accidents involve a rollover.
Golf carts are typically designed with brakes only on the rear axle. As our engineers have addressed in several peer-reviewed journal papers, this can result in the vehicle becoming unstable. A golf cart rollover often occurs as a result of a driver losing control of the car while traveling downhill on a car path. One potential source of a downhill loss of control is the current industry practice of manufacturing golf carts with brakes on only the rear axle wheels. It has long been understood that a braked vehicle with skidding rear tires and rolling front tires is directionally unstable but this instability will not always manifest itself when a vehicle is traveling at sufficiently low speeds on level ground.
