Quote Originally Posted by ridebikeme View Post
when carbon breaks there is NO warning, at least with most of the other materials there is generally some sort of warning upfront before something happens.
What is your basis for this statement? A friend of mine was quite surprised the day the chainstay of his aluminum frame came apart at the weld to the seat stay one day last winter. I've also seem that kind of failure on a different brand Al bike happen during a race for no apparent reason.

Zen, I've seen carbon failures that weren't catastrophic (in terms of crashing and burning). You can easily crush a seat tube at the collar without causing the frame to splinter. Some steerer tube failures happen where cracks extend lengthwise through the tube rather than causing the stem/bars to shear off. Hincapie's aluminum steerer failure was just as catastrophic and sudden as the failures of the carbon steerers 2010 6 series Madone.

As for steerers, how often do you take your fork off your bike to assess the steerer tube?