Quote Originally Posted by xeney
On the other hand, he got hit by a car on a 12-year-old steel Allez this spring, and the frame is bent and unfixable, so the permanence of steel is also possibly a little exaggerated in some quarters.)
When the steel bends, it is absorbing some of the shock that would have gone right to the rider in a carbon fiber; it has to do with the physics of the density of the material. Carbon fiber won't protect you that way.