Kimmel just pointed me to the VeloNews story of a post recall Mavic R-Sys wheel spontaneously imploding. Turns out that one of those wheels happened to fail on a VeloNews editor.
I have had a certain opinion of Mavic for a few years, that opinion is that Mavic makes mostly crap and the whole reputation of the company somehow still gets by on the quality of the Open Pro rim. Other than Open Pros, I no longer buy their stuff. But this R-sys debacle is just frigtening. Most damning to me was the following quote from the article.
Although Mavic representatives were careful not to draw conclusions — none of them saw the accident — it was suggested that perhaps rider error could have caused the wheel to fail through a loss of control.
The author appears to have done the due diligence to find third party accounts to determine that it was not rider error but I really don't care. It should be impossible to get a bicycle wheel to fail like this. There is always going to be rider error. I was in a P12 race last weekend where the rider on my inside hit his pedal in the final corner and kicked his back wheel up. We all kept sprinting like it never happened. Is that considered rider error? If his wheel had failed would Mavic have thought that was okay?
In my road racing career I've had my wheel kick out from hitting a pedal more times than I can count, I've had to hop curbs and sprint up sidewalks to avoid crashes, I've hit potholes head on, I've had peoples deraileurs in my spokes. During all that time I never crashed and none of my equipment ever failed.
