broken forks - carbon?

[hiero2]

I've seen two photos of broken forks lately - one in the killer squirrel thread, another in the Babes on Bikes thread. Both forks appeared to be round tubing, rather than oval, and large diameter. Both were road bikes. Both were broken cleanly about 3-4 inches below the fork crown. They looked like they had been cut, the break was so straight (90 degrees to the direction of the fork tubing, straight across the tube).

This is very strange to me, as I grew up with steel bikes and skinny little forks.

Were these forks carbon? Does carbon typically break in this fashion?

 

[brianf7]

I hope not most forks are carbon these days but yes they do break even the best of them.

When we start getting into cutting edge technology we get problems like we always have.

What we dont know is if the fork was damaged some other way prior so many factors to cause fail. were they fitted correctly.