Originally Posted by
Jughed
I watched Trace rave about a set of Chinese aero bars... I happened to buy a used road bike from a close friend with said bars, before watching the video.
I only watched the video after coming out of the hospital after the bars exploded while I was just riding down the path. The first Trace video raved about the bars, the second one he wasn't raving - he was showing his friends bars that exploded just like mine did.
Never again. I had enough broken bones as a lesson learned.
It's a shame you had to go through that experience and kudos for sharing it.
I've worked with carbon parts a lot in motorsport and seen my fair share of failures over the years. For this reason, I actually avoided carbon bars when they first started appearing on bikes 20-ish years ago as I simply didn't trust the design or QC even from the mainstream brands. I'm happy enough to use them now, but only if I'm confident in the brand and model. There's no way I'm taking my chances with a generic carbon bar regardless of where it was made.