[greglepore]

While on the subject of carbon bikes, there's been a rash of carbon steerer failures reported lately. Trek, at least, claims its due to a combination of stems with large internal cutouts coupled with overtorque on the clamp bolts. Personally, I think there should be an insert in the steerer-AME did this with their first superlight forks, you glued an aluminum sleeve in the steerer after you determined the length (it also was tapped for the cap bolt).

Steerer failure is nasty, instant trip to the pavement. In fact, the whole failure mode of carbon is nasty, period, when it comes to forks-I'm personally aware of a couple of instances where blades simply sheared off. One of these riders got a helicopter ride after.