This is what can happen to the stock cage, and while I know nothing about what actually happened,
it appears to be a simple rollover accident. Combine this with the weak upper front control arm tabs, and considering that these machines can do 60 MPH, it's not hard to envision being killed after one failure cascades into another one.
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After thinking about it, I'm convinced that SXS manufacturers design these machines in a vacuum, with little to no consideration of just how safe they really are, or in this case... aren't. For example, here are some pretty basic questions that have been part of basic vehicle design for more than 50 years. What happens if someone hits a pothole at or near the vehicle's top speed? What happens during a rollover accident? What happens if the brakes fail completely? What happens if it jumps out of gear while parked on a hill? What happens if the exhaust gets too hot during a misfire? What happens if you hit something while driving and it flies up and hits the firewall or wheel well? It ain't exactly rocket science.
Granted, SXS manufacturers must do whatever they can to keep manufacturing costs as low as possible, while creating a product that people want to buy. However, most of the problems plaguing the Honda Pioneer 1000 could have been easily solved by simply using a little common sense and basic testing procedures. Better yet, they should have come up with designs, built reasonably safe production prototypes, then put them into the hands of people like us who would use and abuse them, seeing what works and what doesn't. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than the damage it can do to their reputation, let alone the cost of litigation if a child were to die due to faulty designs.
Personally, I'd like to see less "recall, recall, recall", less "cha ching, cha ching, cha ching", and more "fun, fun, fun".