When his girlfriend nearly fell from his golf cart when rounding a curve, a lightbulb went off for John Long.
“It was a close call,” he remembers.
The Village of Piedmont resident spent 35 years as a body man in Virginia Beach, Va. before retiring to The Villages. Although he loves playing softball in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown, he found he wasn’t quite ready to put away his tools for good.
In the past two years, he has installed about 1,200 sets of seatbelts in Villagers’ golf carts.
“It’s really rewarding work because I know they’re safer with seatbelts,” Long said.
He said many people request seatbelt installation after they have already been in an accident.
Long charges anywhere from $75 to $150 to install seatbelts in a golf cart. He makes house calls and the installation usually takes less than an hour.
The women who died this weekend as a result of injuries suffered after the golf cart in which they had been riding was struck by a Cadillac SUV had not been wearing seatbelts. They both fell from the golf cart as a result of the impact. You can read about that accident HERE