"
carltonreid:
Dangers of modern road racing in NY Times. Could McQuaid be right? Could carbon frames be more dangerous than steel? http://t.co/Y6pchSHy
Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/carltonreid/status/118227247751634944
"
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"Could carbon frames be more dangerous than steel?"
(10 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
-
It's not the material, it's how it's made..
Posted 12 years ago # -
Druid, can you elaborate? Carbon fibre and steel and aluminium all have very different failure modes that are characteristic of the material structure. Is the article implying that 'poorly made' made carbon fibre frames are present in TdF teams?
Posted 12 years ago # -
kinda missing the point too, the problems are much wider than carbon frames. reminds me of the safety battle in F1.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Yeah, the article barely mentions carbon and only in reference to that fact that on a steel bike you can straighten the handlebars and get back on whereas your carbon bike is probably in bits. Whether this increases injury is apparently being "examined"
Posted 12 years ago # -
Indeed, I think his frame snapping was the least of Johnny Hoogerland's (sp?) worries as he bounced along the barbed wire fence after being side swiped by the camera car :-o
Unless people are being injured by frame shards, or are coming off because of frame failures it seems a bit of an irrelevant point.
The absence of reports of this sort of failure/injury would lead me to believe it's either not happening or very unusual, and certainly if I were a cycle manufacturer I would quickly sort that sort of failure both in case it hurt sales and because broken bikes don't win races, get publicity, sell bikes etc etc.Posted 12 years ago # -
There are all sorts of excellent explanations (reassuring or otherwise!) from people who ought to know about this stuff, but from my point of view, there are now so many millions of miles ridden on carbon components and no real body of evidence of brutal failures that I'm pretty relaxed about it.
If I bought a bike for life it would be steel, but the longest I've ever owned one is about 3 years. I'm more worried about aluminium (i.e. handlebar) fatigue if I'm honest.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Dave: "I'm more worried about aluminium (i.e. handlebar) fatigue if I'm honest"
Yep, I also think that's the bit that's most likely to fail. And I think the deep section front wheels that pro's seem to use more now might make bikes harder to control in windy weather.
Posted 12 years ago # -
And I think the deep section front wheels that pro's seem to use more now might make bikes harder to control in windy weather.
If you can afford super-bucks on wheels (as in, not "just" £900-1000, but £1,500 up) then the cross-section of the deep-rim carbon wheels becomes more toroidal (rather than triangular), to improve handling in cross-winds. Hardly the sort of thing you'd want to risk on commuting though!
Posted 12 years ago # -
As someone who has a pair of stupendous wheels (although they cost a fraction of the price quoted upthread!), I can confirm that there's no "might" in "harder to control in windy weather".
That said, not many pro crashes seem to be derived from the wind - if you look for compilations on YouTube there are only two main sorts: rider error and losing grip on wet surface (rider error).
If there are a bunch of videos of frames/forks (of any material) failing and causing an incident, I'd love(/wince) to see them :)
Posted 12 years ago #
Reply
You must log in to post.
posts
