Golf cart crashes are on the rise in The Villages. The number of crashes in the retirement community has a lot of people wondering whether creating golf cart lanes could save lives? Tuesday there was a debate involving safety and consistency.

Because more people in The Villages use golf carts than cars, you’ll find 16-foot wide multimodal paths designed for golf carts, bicyclists and pedestrians to share along every major roadway.

In the past four years, there have been 65 crashes involving golf carts on the trails alone, and that’s not counting crashes with cars on the road.

“The problem is visibility at night. I’m 74 years old, I have cataracts and I have macular degeneration,” golf cart driver Jim Nelson said.

After getting a record number of calls and emails on the issue, Tuesday, for only the second time in The Villages history, supervisors from every Villages Community Development District came together to try to come up with a way to improve golf cart safety.

The debate has been raging for 18 months since District 4 decided to stripe its trails.

“As we age we need better things to help us see where we are going,” Jim Murphy, District 4 Supervisor, explained.

But that portion of The Villages in Marion County was accused of going rogue.

“Not that consistency takes priority, safety is first, but when they look at safety the issue is how to make it consistent throughout the whole community,” Janet Tutt, The Villages District Manager said.

The Villages hired an engineer to study striping. Richard Bush with Kimley-Horn told supervisors edge lines could give the appearance of narrower paths, forcing golf carts into the center. He added center striping would discourage other uses of the trails and basically turn them into golf cart highways.

 “It does not take a very experienced engineer or observer to tell you that if there is one factor that is going to influence whether you are going to be in a crash on the trails -- it’s your rate of speed,” Bush said.

 Each district supervisor was directed to take the engineer's recommendations back to their boards for discussion. District 4 will be allowed to keep its center striping, but it seemed unlikely to be adopted Villages-wide. That left many in the audience to question the board’s priorities.

"Let's stay focused, let's correct the visibility problem," Jerry Vicenti said.

 “I think the Board of Supervisors need to step up to the plate and correct this problem before someone gets killed,” William Berry said.