I ran into a car that abruptly turned in front of me, impacting at 40 kph, followed by a somersault over the top and landing on the rear wheel. the frame absorbed the impact with the road and nicely snapped both seatstays but otherwise held up rather well.

Lucky to be alive hey.

Yes when CF fails it fails catastrophically but practically no, you do not ride your bike enough for the repeated fatigue to weaken modern CF enough for a catastrophic failure. If you do ride your bike enough, you're almost certainly replacing frequently enough that it will never be an issue.

If you want a bike to give to your grandkids when you die get Ti or some form of steel.

My 80’ Concorde steel frame is still intact -well slightly bend but not failure in sight- despite the daily commute and holidays backpacking/trailer. Grandkid test check.

> If you do ride your bike enough, you're almost certainly replacing frequently enough that it will never be an issue.

True for the light athletes that take care during usage and "upgrade" often. Part of the motivation to upgrade is security.

Be more careful if you ride in urban/outdoor with potholes and like to keep using a piece a hardware when it fits your needs.

As a bike mechanist we checked meticulously every second hand frame we sell and find some cracks time to time. Those happen (CN and Aluminum). Direct to the bin.

More importantly: check your rims, especially as we entered the disk era and don’t change them so often. They also do get cracks and fail catastrophically.

I own a 1992 Specialzied Epic Allez with carbon tubes bonded to aluminium lugs. I had an issue with a bond failing at the chainstay and it was repaired but the carbon tubes themselves are still going strong.

I am familiar with the failure mode of bonded frame, we had a number of vitus bikes in the family and usually they just become so noodly you stop before the bond is giving up totally. To be honest I am more concerned about the fatigue of the aluminum fork legs which is the reason I recently ordered a steel fork for the next time I am riding it.

And aluminium also has a tendency to crack, maybe not as abruptly as carbon but still, enough to worry about when buying used.

However, I still worry about getting my carbon hiking poles stuck in a crack, them breaking and then impaling myself on the sharp break

I find CF poles last at least 400 miles on average through moderately rocky terrain. And rarely catastrophic failure. Lots of collapsible poles tend to start breaking close enough to the sleeve that you can shift the rings and tighten them and buy some time.

You got hit at 80kmph? Not sure that the carbon fibre can be blamed for breaking in those circumstances!

No. Most carbon frames come with a lifetime warranty at this point. And a subculture has germinated devoted exclusively to Chinese-brand frames.

I'd like to see/read a deep dive into the open mold carbon cycling frame world from someone in it sometime- it seems like it'd be pretty interesting.

I've not seen any issues with random catastrophic failure like that in MTB land. Maybe it's because the parts are generally laid up much stronger than road? Wheels will break if you mash them into a rock, and even then Santa Cruz notoriously has a line of rims that Danny Macaskill had to ride down stairs repeatedly with no tires on to break.

With the ubiquity of frames at the high amateur level, if there were still issues you'd hear more about them.

Re CF frames... one neglected point is that even when you do crunch them into a rock, they're repairable, whereas Al frames aren't worth repairing due to the heat treat needed. My own CF XC MTB has a repaired chainstay.

hit by a cop car doing 80kph in a 50kph zone

whoa