I had a couple of possible disasters with my compact tractor that fortunately were averted in time.
1. When I was a newbie, I tried to lift a very heavy rock with the bucket. As I kept trying to raise the bucket the rock never moved, and I finally discovered that the rear wheels were off the ground, going higher and higher. That was a change the undies moment.
2. After I should have known better I was going down a somewhat steep driveway with a very heavy bucket load. When I got to the steep part, the tractor CG shifted forward and the tractor tipped forward until the bucket hit the ground. Brakes didn't work because the rear wheels were off the ground. Engine braking didn't work because I was in 2WD. I finally figured out to lower the bucket while sliding slowly down the driveway, before going off the edge that surely would have rolled it. Learned a few things from that one, like adding weight to the back and going downhill in reverse with a heavy bucket load.
And somewhere along the line I realized that if one raises the tilted and loaded bucket high enough, you can dump the whole load on yourself.
I always keep the ROPS up, and one time when my head cleanly cleared a low tree limb, the ROPS caught it, broke it off, and dumped it on my head. This was followed by a tree pruning session. I think there would have been a few good videos had somebody been recording.
