Stupidest Bike Accessory Ever?? (you be the judge ...)

[jobob]

Here's my vote, anyhow:

Carbon spokes

From the article:

Coming around a corner, I felt a shimmy through the front of my bike. I straightened up out of the turn to bring the bike under control. A second or two later I catapulted over the handlebars. The rim of my front wheel had completely detached from the hub. I had not hit anything — not another rider, a curb or even a rock. I landed on my head and broke my shoulder.

The front wheel was Mavic's second generation, post-recall carbon-spoke R-Sys wheel.

[...]

In a steel-spoke wheel, at least four or five spokes must break before the wheel will crumple or taco. With the original R-Sys, it appeared that only one spoke needed to fail before the whole system came undone. Mavic contends that this problem was solved in the second-generation wheel.

Well, err, notsomuch.

Check out the photos in the article of what was left of the wheel .

[Zen]

the really stupid part of that is it's not an accessory, it's a necessity.
There's a need for weight saving but this ain't it.

[sgtiger]

The ridiculous lengths some people go to save a little weight amazes me. Carbon spokes, srly?!!

[IvonaDestroi]

I <3 Lugged Steel.

[Zen]

gotta get the t-shirt

[Cataboo]

hrm. I'd say carbon spokes are pretty stupid... but I still ride on a set of old spinergy rev-x's that can collapse catastrophically. I just pretend it's okay because I'm not that heavy and I don't warp/twist them like heavier riders did - and I don't ride with groups of people where someone's pedals gonna get caught in my wheel.

However, they're not really light wheels - they've very fast, but the main benefit to me is that they really do just absolutely soak up road vibration. I can go down chip seal on them and not feel a thing. Very nice on my wrists.