So let’s start by telling you that there is such a thing as the World Championship Roto-Tiller Races and those races are held in the bustling metropolis of Emerson, Arkansas. There are classes for kids and adults, multiple classes of “tillers” and the whole thing is a fun looking grassroots affair. There’s apparently a class for wide open, unlimited machines and that’s what you are going to see here. Both of the tillers in this video are powered by motorcycle engines and are designed specifically for this  competition and actually one of them was designed to set the world record for this type of thing. We’re reasonably certain that absolutely no one outside of Emerson, Arkansas  gives a tine about this record but the dudes in this video have been training for a while to get this done.

The tiller with the four-cylinder engine is the one designed to set the record and you can hear the operator guy (who never gives his name as best we can tell) say that the machine is capable of hitting 30MPH. That’s not all that fast when you consider that the operator is RUNNING BEHIND IT. Running behind it is a bit of a misnomer though because the reality is that the guy is being dragged along and his legs are there to prevent him from eating too much dirt by essentially skipping along the Earth.

Things are trucking along well for both racers until the middle/end part of the course. The camera is following the world record guy and just at the finish line he loses his footing, the machine flies out of control and he decides it is time to let go. After letting go he flips and flops eventually landing on his back with a wounded leg. The tiller ends up blasting through hay bales and tangled up in a barbed wire fence. Without that fence, the thing would have ended up in the next county after plowing through a couple of homes. Over in the other lane, that racer was having issues as well with his tiller, powered by a measly two cylinder bike engine he got off track before the finish line. That driver and his craft ended up in the hay bales on the side of the course. When you hear the dude recount the run, he’s pretty well convinced that if he had not held on until the whole mess crashed, it would have gotten into the crowd and hurt someone. Talk about an obituary you don’t want to be starring in. “Chewed up by racing roto-tiller” isn’t really what people want to have chipped into their headstone.

You really have to see this video to believe it.

PRESS PLAY TO SEE TWO RACING ROTO-TILLERS GET PISSED AND TAKE BOTH OF THEIR OPERATORS ON PAINFUL RIDES!