Coroner's report on roadie that died after frame failure

bear the bear

Is a real bear
No bike had been laid down a couple of times, and more importantly the forks in question had a known issue with de-bonding (carbon/ alloy).
Spoke with the owner of one of the two shops today that serviced the bike prior to the accident and was involved with the post investigation with Trek Australia.

The reporting on this isn't 100% correct.
 

Haakon

Keeps on digging
No bike had been laid down a couple of times, and more importantly the forks in question had a known issue with de-bonding (carbon/ alloy).
Spoke with the owner of one of the two shops today that serviced the bike prior to the accident and was involved with the post investigation with Trek Australia.

The reporting on this isn't 100% correct.
So did the head tube fail or the steerer...?

But plenty of people eat pavement with fork/bar failures, bad luck for it to be fatal...
 

floody

Wheel size expert
I don't think putting a fatigue life on roadie stuff would be a bad idea at all, particularly in an environment involving proximity to fast moving 2 ton lumps of metal.

I gave my dad a 1996 Specialized roadie and to be honest the bonded aluminium/carbon Kinesis fork frightens me a bit.
 

schred

Likes Bikes and Dirt
So it had an inclusion, and now preventative replacement is recommended, but on a timescale they aren't sure of? Fck me, isn't that a practical recommendation. How about no inclusions in the first instance?
 

bear the bear

Is a real bear
So did the head tube fail or the steerer...?

But plenty of people eat pavement with fork/bar failures, bad luck for it to be fatal...
It was the bonding in the fork.

And yes it was an unfortunate accident as steering components do break.
 

scblack

Leucocholic
I don't think putting a fatigue life on roadie stuff would be a bad idea at all, particularly in an environment involving proximity to fast moving 2 ton lumps of metal.

I gave my dad a 1996 Specialized roadie and to be honest the bonded aluminium/carbon Kinesis fork frightens me a bit.
I hear you, but unless you log your riding comprehensively that would be a meaningless reference point, as is stated in the article somewhere. The majority of bikes owned by non-enthusiasts spend 99.999% of their life shoved in a garage so they would not get enough use to fatigue any parts. A failure like this guy, could happen the day it rolls brand new out of the shop - just a random unfortunate failure.
 

whodesigns

Likes Bikes
This is a tragedy for this family that in hindsight could have been avoided.

One of the interests within the cycling industry right now is quality control and non destructive inspection of parts, particularly carbon composite. I am actually presenting at a conference sponsored by the UCI on this topic in a couple of weeks in the US.
Flaws in the manufacturing process can significantly reduce the mechanical properties of a part and increase the likelihood of failure. As parts become lighter the margin for error reduces and being able to predict how the part behaves at load becomes more critical. Flaws make this unpredictable.

People claim that testing and inspection is too expensive, however the cost of failure can be significantly more. Maybe the advertising budgets can take a back seat for a while and they can invest further in quality control.

I have scrapped many many road forks that I have found serious manufacturing flaws in using ultrasound scans, these flaws are not visible on the surface. I have cut up some of these as displays and post them on my website and Instagram.

Riding your bike is fun, why take risks that can be easily avoided.

My condolences to the family.
 

Boom King

downloaded a pic of moorey's bruised arse
This is a tragedy for this family that in hindsight could have been avoided.

One of the interests within the cycling industry right now is quality control and non destructive inspection of parts, particularly carbon composite. I am actually presenting at a conference sponsored by the UCI on this topic in a couple of weeks in the US.
Flaws in the manufacturing process can significantly reduce the mechanical properties of a part and increase the likelihood of failure. As parts become lighter the margin for error reduces and being able to predict how the part behaves at load becomes more critical. Flaws make this unpredictable.

People claim that testing and inspection is too expensive, however the cost of failure can be significantly more. Maybe the advertising budgets can take a back seat for a while and they can invest further in quality control.

I have scrapped many many road forks that I have found serious manufacturing flaws in using ultrasound scans, these flaws are not visible on the surface. I have cut up some of these as displays and post them on my website and Instagram.

Riding your bike is fun, why take risks that can be easily avoided.

My condolences to the family.
Is the process involved in making quality carbon components dramatically more expensive than the cheaper stuff?

I mean, aerospace and motorsport manufacturers make all sorts of stuff out of carbon that withstands huge forces, stresses and temperatures without failure.
 

thatsnotme

Likes Dirt
This is a tragedy for this family that in hindsight could have been avoided.

One of the interests within the cycling industry right now is quality control and non destructive inspection of parts, particularly carbon composite. I am actually presenting at a conference sponsored by the UCI on this topic in a couple of weeks in the US.
Flaws in the manufacturing process can significantly reduce the mechanical properties of a part and increase the likelihood of failure. As parts become lighter the margin for error reduces and being able to predict how the part behaves at load becomes more critical. Flaws make this unpredictable.

People claim that testing and inspection is too expensive, however the cost of failure can be significantly more. Maybe the advertising budgets can take a back seat for a while and they can invest further in quality control.

I have scrapped many many road forks that I have found serious manufacturing flaws in using ultrasound scans, these flaws are not visible on the surface. I have cut up some of these as displays and post them on my website and Instagram.

Riding your bike is fun, why take risks that can be easily avoided.

My condolences to the family.
I love what you do, and have really enjoyed watching the videos where you're explaining and showing everything about carbon manufacture, but I've got to disagree that this risk can be 'easily avoided'.

The type of service you provide is very much specialised, and simply isn't available in most parts of the country. Is there anyone else who provides a similar type of testing and scanning service? Is it realistic to ship off your brand new, $3k Giant Defy for a full inspection before you ride it?

Unless you can clone yourself a few thousand times, the type of service you provide is out of reach for the average punter, monetarily and practically. The onus needs to be put back on the manufacturer to carry out this testing, not the consumer. Yes, the cost will end up being carried by the consumer, but that cost will be far far lower than it'd be arranging it themselves.

That's not even taking into account a bike that's had some type of stack in its lifetime. Do you pay for a full inspection every time you have an accident?

At the end of the day, I agree that this poor guy just got very, very unlucky.
 

thatsnotme

Likes Dirt
Is the process involved in making quality carbon components dramatically more expensive than the cheaper stuff?

I mean, aerospace and motorsport manufacturers make all sorts of stuff out of carbon that withstands huge forces, stresses and temperatures without failure.
You should watch some of the YouTube vids on whodesigns' channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY9JUMYI54lLOHpb_zbIedQ

Paraphrasing what I learned watching them, basically aerospace scan everything and if it's not perfect it doesn't fly. I'm sure that F1 is the same. So yeah, I'd say the process is hugely more expensive. I'm sure the expense of making carbon that's 99.99% perfect compared to 95% perfect is immense.
 

Boom King

downloaded a pic of moorey's bruised arse
You should watch some of the YouTube vids on whodesigns' channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY9JUMYI54lLOHpb_zbIedQ

Paraphrasing what I learned watching them, basically aerospace scan everything and if it's not perfect it doesn't fly. I'm sure that F1 is the same. So yeah, I'd say the process is hugely more expensive. I'm sure the expense of making carbon that's 99.99% perfect compared to 95% perfect is immense.
Have seen them. Wanted an answer from the horses mouth.
 

The Duckmeister

Has a juicy midrange
I love what you do, and have really enjoyed watching the videos where you're explaining and showing everything about carbon manufacture, but I've got to disagree that this risk can be 'easily avoided'.

The type of service you provide is very much specialised, and simply isn't available in most parts of the country. Is there anyone else who provides a similar type of testing and scanning service? Is it realistic to ship off your brand new, $3k Giant Defy for a full inspection before you ride it?
I read it as Raoul's pointing the finger squarely at The Industry in that comment, not us, the riders, i.e it's easily avoided if they put due care and effort into ensuring their products are properly and safely built in the first place.
 

thatsnotme

Likes Dirt
I read it as Raoul's pointing the finger squarely at The Industry in that comment, not us, the riders, i.e it's easily avoided if they put due care and effort into ensuring their products are properly and safely built in the first place.
Ok fair enough if that's the way it was meant, and I hope that Raoul can help to drive improvements in this area.
 

whodesigns

Likes Bikes
When I say easily avoided, I mean that the knowledge and technology exists and has existed for a long time to non destructively inspect these type of parts, it is not new, I was doing it 25 years ago and it was well established then.

Yes this was directed at the industry, they should be putting out parts that have a greater level of quality control. The nature of composites is that it is process driven, in that each part is individually made and can have individual problems, however if the process is not robust the variables become greater. Inspection provides data to validate if the process is robust or not, this should not be up to the rider to find out the hard way. There have been recalls on many forks over the years, which shows that they do get it wrong. They need to learn from getting it wrong.

I don't think the cost is as much a barrier as people suggest, Canyon for example say they CT scan each fork and their bikes are by no means the most expensive in the market.

It comes down to understanding the issues, the bike industry has transitioned from metal bikes to carbon bikes very quickly and appears to have skipped some of the quality process' required. The quality control for a metal tubeset is done at the mill not on each individual frame as it is put together, it is a different mindset.

I am not saying that each rider needs to pay to get their bike inspected by someone with my skillset before they ride, they should not have to, however if you are unsure about things it is clearly prudent to get things checked, especially on a failure critical part like a fork.

Ride safe.
 

c3024446

Likes Bikes and Dirt
I've got a 1999 Litespeed with a Kinesis carbon fork I think. Bike has probably done 15000km?

Shouldn't have read this, may have to get an enve fork now :behindsofa:
 

scblack

Leucocholic
This is a tragedy for this family that in hindsight could have been avoided.

One of the interests within the cycling industry right now is quality control and non destructive inspection of parts, particularly carbon composite. I am actually presenting at a conference sponsored by the UCI on this topic in a couple of weeks in the US.
Flaws in the manufacturing process can significantly reduce the mechanical properties of a part and increase the likelihood of failure. As parts become lighter the margin for error reduces and being able to predict how the part behaves at load becomes more critical. Flaws make this unpredictable.

People claim that testing and inspection is too expensive, however the cost of failure can be significantly more. Maybe the advertising budgets can take a back seat for a while and they can invest further in quality control.

I have scrapped many many road forks that I have found serious manufacturing flaws in using ultrasound scans, these flaws are not visible on the surface. I have cut up some of these as displays and post them on my website and Instagram.

Riding your bike is fun, why take risks that can be easily avoided.

My condolences to the family.
You'll probably be horrified that I road a Chinarello frame and fork for a couple of years around Sydney roads. Perfectly safe for me - even though I know the probable level of quality checking was approximately Zero.

It now hangs in my garage.
 

thatsnotme

Likes Dirt
When I say easily avoided, I mean that the knowledge and technology exists and has existed for a long time to non destructively inspect these type of parts, it is not new, I was doing it 25 years ago and it was well established then.

<snip>

I am not saying that each rider needs to pay to get their bike inspected by someone with my skillset before they ride, they should not have to, however if you are unsure about things it is clearly prudent to get things checked, especially on a failure critical part like a fork.

Ride safe.
Thanks, yes I obviously misinterpreted your original post, and I agree with you completely.

Regarding the technology that you use and the checks that you can provide, I'm curious about whether there is anyone else in the country doing similar to what you do at a consumer level? If I was a rider in Perth or Brisbane, would I be able to find someone local I could drop my bike off to for inspection, or would I need to ship it off to you?
 

floody

Wheel size expert
I hear you, but unless you log your riding comprehensively that would be a meaningless reference point, as is stated in the article somewhere. The majority of bikes owned by non-enthusiasts spend 99.999% of their life shoved in a garage so they would not get enough use to fatigue any parts. A failure like this guy, could happen the day it rolls brand new out of the shop - just a random unfortunate failure.
Sure,but it would only need to be an advisory, and it could be based on an extreme duty estimate so at worst might result in viable parts being trashed rather than life expired parts failing.

I'm sure there's plenty of SIDs out being ridden by +80kg riders.
 
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