Kansas YouTuber Westen Champlin was riding a brand-new lawn mower down a Derby street when police pulled him over. He makes a living filming himself driving strange vehicles, so he caught the stop on camera. He posted the clip as a video that has since drawn millions of views, and his caption joked that police had stopped him for mowing the city’s grass
The officer greeted Champlin with “What’s up, Westen?” He introduced himself as Officer Brown and said his son watches Champlin’s videos. They shook hands before Brown got to the reason for the stop.
Champlin and his friend Kyle had just bought the two red Craftsman mowers at Lowe’s, and the price tags were still on them. They were riding the mowers home to Mulvane when Brown stopped them. He told them they couldn’t take the machines onto a public street, since they have no tags and no turn signals.
Champlin joked back that he had nowhere to ride but the road, and that he planned to modify the mowers to race them, since they were too slow as bought. Brown and a second officer laughed along. A passing driver leaned out his window to yell at Champlin. The stop ended with a handshake and directions home, and Brown didn’t write them a ticket. He had been mowing the grass around the city, after all.
Who Is Westen Champlin?
Champlin is a YouTuber from Kansas with millions of subscribers who watch him do strange things with vehicles. He grew up on a farm near Winfield and started posting videos about fixing and modifying trucks, mostly diesels. The channel grew from there into bigger and more ridiculous builds.
Police have turned up in his videos before, more than once. He has been fined over backyard burnout contests after neighbors called in noise complaints, and officers have become a regular part of the content. This time, it stayed friendly from the start.
Can You Drive a Lawn Mower on the Road?
Brown was right on the law, joking aside. A riding mower is made to cut grass in a yard, and it lacks the plates and turn signals a street-legal vehicle needs. Take one out on a public road and you can get stopped or ticketed, which is what happened to Champlin and Kyle.
A riding mower can’t be registered for street use, so there’s no plate or sticker that would make a road trip on one legal. The usual way to move a new mower home is in a truck bed or on a trailer. Champlin and Kyle skipped that and rode theirs down the road. The grass they mowed along the way was, hilariously, incidental.