Watch Cleetus McFarland Roll a SxS With No Helmet

It’s always fun to see the bananas stuff Cleetus McFarland gets up to on his YouTube channel—from a seven-second El Camino, to a Carbon Cub, to jet boats—and it’s especially rad when his antics include side-by-sides. A couple of weeks ago he headed to the Silver Lake Dunes in Michigan for a couple days of ripping with the SXSBlog crew. The results were predictable: plenty of fast dune driving, huge jumps, and at least one 500-odd horsepower Can-Am Maverick X3. As ever, though, there is a “but.”

Throughout the video McFarland and crew abandon even the suggestion of safety, opting to rip around helmetless. It’s worth noting that Silver Lake Dunes require helmets for ATVs and dirt bikes, but the regs don’t mention UTVs. So it may not be against the rules to roll helmetless, but it’s needlessly dumb. Not only that, at different points in the video you can see drivers and riders holding the outside of the roll cage with a bare hand. If you’re confused about why that’s a bad idea, check out this horror story.

It gets downright dangerous when Cleeter puts his modified X3 on its side trying to beat his own lap record around an impromptu course. It was a slow-speed tip-over, but you don’t necessarily need to be going full tilt to get very injured. And, given the big speed and big jumps of the day, at least a gentle rollover was all but inevitable.

We know how this comes off, but in this case we don’t care. Have fun, but for goodness’ sake wear a helmet and keep your hands inside the vehicle. It’s all fun and games until it ain’t, and no hospital stay or rehab is worth it.

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