Australian coroner asks standards body to look into mandatory safe life for bike parts after man was killed by aluminium steerer tube failure

Yep 2006 Paris Roubaix. Broke his collarbone.

To be fair the dramatic failure of components does happen more than once in a blue moon. I know someone with a dramatic and severe scar from a sudden failure of a stem. I have had a stem faceplate snap, and most memorably was George Hincapie throwing his arms in the air during a classics race (Roubaix?) then realised he still had his bars in his hands! That was a steerer failure. 

Point is fortunately when these things happen for most of us it results in grazes and sometimes a cracked bone not a fatality. Tragic but I would to be forced onto heavily built steel bikes to minimise such problems.

I don't really see this 'flying'. There is a very restricted pool of aircraft, they are inspected regularly by trained personnel, they know where they all are, they can be monitored and bulletins issued if an Issue is found anywhere on the fleet.

How on earth do you do that for cycles?

I have a suggestions though

All production forks, stems and handlebars should be fully fatigue tested, crash tested etc. Over a long period before being released for sale. And maintenance instructions need to more specific and not just a load of arse covering.

I know this would lead to a more limited range of such parts, but so what, none have an especially huge performance impact, but all have a devastating impact if they fail.

more detail  on Coroner's report here:

http://courts.act.gov.au/magistrates/decisions/inquest-into-the-death-of...

I never considered that metal would fatigue until my cheap FSA crank did this while commuting.

Marin wrote in their owner's manuals that light weight handlebars should be replaced every two years.
It didn't help them (or the guy who died) when a 10 year old set of bars broke after a few crashes.

Quote:

A fatigue crack growing slowly over 10 years would surely be noticeable at some point.

Not necessarily. With fatigue failure, what happens is that a small crack initiates from what may be some sort of defect in the material which can be microscopic. Over the course of more stress cycles, the crack will grow until it reaches what's known as the "critical crack length" and the crack will immediately propagate across the width of the material. This results in catastrophic failure of the component, which is what happened in this case.

Most Al alloys are known not to have a "fatigue limit" like carbon steel has ie. if you keep the stresses below a certain level, it will not fatigue fail.

That's why you should replace critical Al alloy componentry on a bike such as handlebars and stems after you've done plenty of miles on them, or you'll end up face-planting like this unfortunate bloke did.

I know someone died but I hate this sort of thing and it's red tape potential. As has been pointed out, how many millions upon millions of miles have bikes done and not had this sort of failure but the first time it happens then it's time for legislation. 

I'm also putting my money (or lack of it) where my mouth is and running some chinese forks on one bike. Hopefully mine will never fail. 

What type of stem and headset were used? How many spacers below and above the stem? Star fangled nut or compression plug? Steerer minimum insertion into stem met? Were the stem bolts correctly torqued? Didn't see any mention of any of these? How much corrosion from rider's sweat? When was the last time the headset was serviced? A fatigue crack growing slowly over 10 years would surely be noticeable at some point.

Way too many unnamed variables to specifically name design flaw, especially when there's been literally tens of thousands of these exact forks with no reported incidents.

She can recommend what she likes but this is never going to happen.  It would be unenforceable, expensive and intrusive.  Apart from that it's a good idea.