Originally Posted by
mylesau
The main reason to go for 'curved' forks is shock absorption - they take the 'hum' out of the road - straight forks tend to send the 'hum' to your hands.
+1 - before there was suspension in bicycles folks used high volume tires and curved forks to deal with the inevitable shock and vibration from the road.
I have touring bikes with straight forks [all disc brake bikes] and curved forks [all v-brake bikes] the curved forks do provide a more compliant ride and make hand numbness and other related issues considerably less of a concern. You can mitigate these problems on a straight fork bike by using more padding, different grips, better gloves, higher volume tires, etc... Unless you are very susceptible to these types of injuries in which case I'd stick with a nice compliant curved steel fork on your touring rig.
Unless I need disc brakes for a specific application I'd prefer a curved fork and v-brakes for touring. I'd say I'm about in the middle of the pack when it comes to how sensitive my hands are to injury. I have had a nerve injury that lasted for 6 months on a bike with straight forks on a very rough road and I know the transmission of vibration straight up those stiff fork legs to my bars was a significant factor in my injury. I've since added Ergon grips and double layers of cork tape to those bars. I definitely don't want a repeat injury given how long it took to heal.