You don't know who's driving on your property right now.
Neither does your insurance company.

If you run a large event, the honest answer is: you have no idea.

Golf carts scattered across the property, allocated to vendors, sponsors, VIPs, and staff — many of them operating without formal routes, without training, without logs, and without anyone in your organization knowing who is behind the wheel at any given moment. Pedicabs rolling through your crowds — human-powered vehicles carrying paying passengers on your property, operated by people you didn't hire, didn't vet, didn't insure, and in many cases didn't even authorize to be there.

The golf cart reality: a fleet without a plan

At most large events, the golf cart fleet isn't really a fleet at all. It's a collection of individually rented or owned vehicles that have been distributed across the operation with varying degrees of oversight.

Some carts are assigned to operations staff for legitimate utility purposes — moving equipment, transporting supplies, responding to incidents. These are usually the best-managed vehicles on the property because the ops team has some accountability structure around them.

But a significant portion of the fleet is allocated to vendors, sponsors, production crews, VIP liaisons, and other stakeholders who received a cart as part of their event package. These carts are operated by people who may have received a five-minute orientation — or no orientation at all. They drive at their own discretion, on their own paths, at their own speed, through crowds of pedestrians who have no expectation that a vehicle is about to come through.

There are no fixed routes. No posted schedules. No centralized dispatch. No log of who is operating which vehicle at any given time. No tracking of where each vehicle is on the property. No mechanism for the venue to recall a cart or remove an unsafe driver from the fleet in real time.

At one FlexTram client site, the cart inventory had grown to over 1,300 units — "a lot of golf carts when no golf is being played," as we noted in our original paradigm post. Management had no idea who was operating them, where any cart was at any given time, or where fuel costs were going. The fleet had grown organically, year over year, without anyone stepping back to ask whether this was a plan or just an accumulation of individual decisions.

This is the norm, not the exception. At large festivals, stadium events, and multi-day productions, the golf cart fleet is the single largest collection of unmanaged vehicles on the property. And every one of them is a risk unit that the venue is carrying on its liability profile.

The injury data is not hypothetical

This isn't a theoretical risk. Golf cart injuries are well-documented, federally tracked, and increasing.

An estimated 15,000 golf cart-related injuries require emergency room visits in the United States every year, according to data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. (AOAO Journal / CPSC NEISS)

Golf cart incidents rose 64% between 2015 and 2024, with a dramatic spike during the pandemic years as cart usage expanded beyond traditional golf course settings. (Diaco Law / NEISS Analysis)

Insurance claims for golf cart accidents have risen over 300% in the last decade. (Gitnux / CPSC)

The most common injury mechanism — accounting for 38% of all cases — is falling or being ejected from the cart. Not collisions. Not rollovers. Passengers simply falling out of an open vehicle that has no seatbelts, no doors, and no restraint system of any kind.

And here's the statistic that should concern every event operator: 75% of golf cart injuries involve passengers, not operators. The person who gets hurt is almost never the person who chose to drive. They're the person who accepted a ride — the fan, the guest, the VIP, the sponsor's client — who trusted that the vehicle and the operator were safe.

Driving on asphalt — which is the primary surface at stadiums, parking lots, and paved event sites — increases ejection risk by 20% compared to grass, due to higher friction during turns. Approximately 70% of golf cart accidents occur at sports facilities, including golf courses and stadiums. (Gitnux / CPSC)

In Florida, golf carts are legally classified as "dangerous instrumentalities" — meaning the owner of the cart has liability for the negligent actions of the operator. At events where the venue or the rental company owns the fleet, that liability doesn't transfer to the driver. It stays with the owner. (GolfCartAttorney.com)

And courts have consistently held that event organizers can be liable for injuries caused by poorly maintained paths, failure to enforce safety measures, or inadequate oversight of vehicles operating on their premises. (ESC Law)

Pedicabs: the liability you didn't even invite

If golf carts are unplanned, pedicabs are uninvited.

At most events where pedicabs operate, they are not deployed by the venue. They are independent operators — subcontractors at best, unauthorized vendors at worst — who show up at event sites and begin carrying passengers for tips or fares. The venue didn't hire them. The venue didn't vet them. The venue didn't verify their insurance. The venue didn't train them. And in many cases, the venue didn't even authorize them to be on the property.

But they're there. On venue property. Moving venue patrons. In vehicles with no seatbelts, no safety harnesses, no airbags, no roll protection, and no crash structure of any kind. Operated by individuals who, in many jurisdictions, require little or no licensing to carry paying passengers.

The City of Houston made this problem explicit before the Houston Rodeo when it issued a public advisory warning patrons that not all pedicabs operating near events are legally permitted: "A ride from a remote parking spot could be costly if the vehicle is not properly permitted and involved in an accident." The city requires pedicabs to be permitted and carry insurance — but acknowledged that enforcement is inconsistent and many operators are not compliant. (City of Houston Administration & Regulatory Affairs)

San Diego personal injury attorneys describe the pedicab industry as lacking "basic oversight and regulation, putting the lives of passengers in danger." They note that "little or no training and licensing are required, so basically anyone is permitted to operate a pedicab" and that "a number of disreputable pedicab companies operating do not carry insurance coverage for customers injured while riding." (Jurewitz Law Group)

Now consider the liability picture from the venue's perspective. A patron is injured in a pedicab accident on venue property. The pedicab operator has no insurance, no permit, and no contractual relationship with the venue. The patron's attorney files against the venue under premises liability — arguing that the venue allowed an unregulated, uninsured transportation service to operate on its property without adequate oversight or safety measures.

The venue's general liability policy is now defending a claim caused by a vehicle it didn't deploy, operated by a person it didn't hire, carrying a passenger who assumed the venue had sanctioned the ride.

That's not a hypothetical. That's a Tuesday in event law.

Arlington, Texas: what happens when a city says enough

If you want to see what the end of the road looks like for uncontrolled pedicab and golf cart operations, look at Arlington, Texas — home of AT&T Stadium (Dallas Cowboys) and Globe Life Field (Texas Rangers).

For roughly a decade, Arlington ran a permitted pedicab and golf cart for-hire program in the entertainment district surrounding its two major sports venues. On paper, it was a regulated system — operators needed permits, the city set boundaries, and there were rules about where vehicles could operate.

In practice, it was chaos.

Keith Brooks, Arlington's Assistant Director of Public Works and Transportation, described the complaints to the city council: operators were picking up and dropping off passengers in restricted locations, driving between cars, driving on sidewalks, and there were constant reports of verbal altercations and inappropriate behavior between operators in front of patrons. (CBS Texas)

Mayor Pro Tem Robert Shepard was blunter: "We've struggled to get what I would call mature people operating the pedicab." (NBC DFW)

Over five years, the city issued 79 citations for pedicab violations. Both the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Cowboys formally complained about the program. And in January 2020, the Arlington City Council voted 8-0 — unanimously — to terminate the pedicab and golf cart for-hire program entirely, letting all operator permits expire the following March. (WFAA)

An estimated 300 people lost their jobs.

But here's the part that matters most for anyone thinking about onsite transportation: the city didn't want to eliminate transportation. It wanted to eliminate the chaos. After the vote, multiple council members said they were open to reconsidering the program — but only under a fundamentally different model. Mayor Jeff Williams said: "We're still going to look at alternatives to see if pedicabs can continue in this community." Several members suggested contracting with a single operator, or having the Rangers or Cowboys manage the program directly. (CBS Texas)

What they described — without using these words — was a system. A single accountable operator. Managed routes. Controlled vehicles. Venue oversight. The exact opposite of what they'd been running for a decade.

Arlington didn't have a transportation problem. It had an operational control problem. The demand was real — pedicabs had moved over 2 million people to Rangers games alone since 2009. The service was wanted. But the model was unmanageable. And when the liability, the complaints, and the reputational risk finally outweighed the convenience, the city did the only thing it could: shut the whole thing down.

That's the trajectory every venue with an uncontrolled pedicab or golf cart operation is on. The only question is whether you redesign the model before the city council — or your insurance company — does it for you.

The operational control gap

The common thread between golf cart fleets and pedicab operators isn't the vehicle type. It's the absence of operational control.

A golf cart fleet with 50 vehicles and 50 operators — most of them untrained, many of them unauthorized, all of them untracked — creates 50 independent liability vectors on your property. Each vehicle makes its own routing decisions. Each operator applies their own judgment about speed, path, and pedestrian interaction. There is no system governing their behavior, no documentation of their movements, and no mechanism for the venue to intervene in real time if something goes wrong.

A pedicab operation adds additional liability vectors that the venue has even less control over — because the venue has no contractual relationship with the operators at all.

The risk manager looking at this picture sees what the ops team often doesn't: every uncontrolled vehicle on the property is an exposure. And the more vehicles, the more operators, and the less oversight, the larger the exposure grows.

Commercial insurance data from 2025 shows general liability premiums for events increasing 5–6%, with umbrella coverage up 9%. (Inszone Insurance / California Event Insurance Analysis) Underwriters are asking more questions about fleet composition, operator training, and vehicle safety protocols — because the claims data is telling them that onsite vehicles are a growing source of loss.

What operational control actually looks like

The alternative isn't "no transportation." The alternative is a system — with the same operational discipline the venue applies to every other safety-critical function on the property.

A FlexTram deployment replaces the unmanaged fleet with a documented, accountable transportation system:

Fewer vehicles, fewer operators. Six trams replace 50+ golf carts. Six trained, accountable drivers replace dozens of ad hoc operators with varying levels of training and authorization. The risk surface area shrinks by an order of magnitude.

Fixed routes, predictable movement. Every tram runs a documented route. The path is known. The speed is controlled. The boarding points are designated. Pedestrians know where to expect the vehicle because the route is posted and consistent. There are no surprises.

Trained drivers, documented accountability. Every operator is trained on the specific vehicle, the specific route, and the specific safety protocols of the venue. There's a log of who is driving, when, and where. If an incident occurs, there's a documented chain of accountability — not a shrug and a question about which vendor was assigned that cart.

Consolidated pedestrian interaction. Instead of 50 vehicles creating 50 sets of pedestrian-vehicle conflict points across the property, a fixed-route tram consolidates all passenger movement onto a single, visible, predictable corridor. Pedestrians and vehicles are separated by design, not by luck.

No unauthorized operators. The fleet is controlled by the venue. There are no vendor carts, no sponsor carts, no unauthorized pedicabs operating outside the system. If it's carrying passengers on your property, it's part of the plan.

The conversation worth having

Most venue operators have never had a conversation with their insurance broker specifically about onsite transportation risk. Fleet composition, operator training, pedicab authorization, vehicle tracking — these topics don't typically appear on the renewal questionnaire. But they affect the claims profile. And the claims profile affects the premium.

The conversation worth having is a simple one: walk your event site during peak operations with your risk manager. Count the vehicles. Note how many are golf carts with untrained operators. Note how many are pedicabs with no insurance verification. Note how many vehicles are moving through pedestrian crowds with no fixed route and no oversight. Then ask: if our underwriter walked this site with us, what would they say?

The answer is almost certainly: you're carrying more risk than you need to, on more vehicles than you need, with less control than you should have. And the fix isn't complicated — it's consolidation. Fewer vehicles. Trained operators. Fixed routes. Documented accountability. A system instead of a scattering.

Your insurance company has an opinion about your fleet. The question is whether you hear it before or after the claim.