Guess what you can now do legally on Daufuskie in the dark?

If you live on Daufuskie Island, chances are you’ve got a golf cart — and if you’ve got a cart, you probably drive it night.

Whether you realized it or not, you were breaking the law cruising around after dark.

Not anymore.

Beaufort County Council passed a measure earlier this week allowing nighttime golf cart use on the island, making it the first place in the county where such driving is permitted on public roads.

While state lawmakers paved the way for nighttime cart driving on public streets nearly a year ago, passage of a Beaufort County ordinance allowing it hit a series of speed bumps due to concerns over safety and the cost of upgrading older carts to meet proposed safety standards.

While several county leaders — including Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner — pushed for seat belts and child-safety restraints to be included on the list of requirements, many officials say the recently passed ordinance represents a compromise. It requires all carts to have working headlights and rear lights but does not force owners to upgrade their rides with aftermarket parts such as strobes, horns or specialty windshields.

“We’ve been talking about for it eight months,” Beaufort County Councilman Tabor Vaux, whose district includes Daufuskie Island, said earlier this week.

Even if tweaks to the ordinance are necessary in the future, “at least we can get some resolution for this now,” he said.

Daufuskie Island is only accessible by boat, and there are very few cars on island roadways.

“... Golf carts are the primary mode of transportation on the island,” according to the new county ordinance. “... There is virtually no automobile traffic on the island which could pose a danger to people operating golf carts at night.”

That’s why county officials selected the island as a proving ground of sorts for the new nighttime use regulations.

“This isn’t going to change anything on the island; (carts are) how people get around,” Vaux said. “This is just making it legal.”

Whether the rules will be soon be changed to allow nighttime carting on the mainland remains unclear.

Beaufort County attorney Tom Keaveny said earlier this week that municipal leaders in Bluffton, Beaufort and Port Royal “all want it.”

“But under the state (law), they aren’t able to enact (new rules) themselves,” he said.

County Council must pass an additional ordinance — one that would likely require additional safety enhancements — to allow nighttime cart driving anywhere off Daufuskie Island.

“We’ve said we will give it a couple of months to see what happens” on the island before bringing forth any new regulations for the mainland, Councilman Stu Rodman said earlier this week.

This story was originally published May 11, 2017 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Guess what you can now do legally on Daufuskie in the dark?."