The first new bike I purchased was a Trek 412 from Palo Alto bike shop (paid for with my first post-college pay check). Less than a year later, I had a head on collision with another cyclist on the Stanford campus. My fork was fine, but it bent the top tube and down tube just behind the head tube. What I was told was that the fork is actually supposed to absorb the impact of those kind of collisions; thus, my non-bent fork failed me! I continued to ride that bike with its awfully twitchy handling until it got stolen a couple of years later. It wouldn't be another 20+ years that I'd buy a new bike (a Kogswell P/R in 2006, which I've since sold off).

Neal