Hush money. For many, their confidence is shaken...if a mfr lets safety critical product out the door and into the hands of the public. Most of us know what happens if a fork fails. Unfortunately...what happens is...more than one fork fail in the field, people get hurt, manufactures find out and then the mad dash to mitigate liability aka law suits begins...how it goes. None of us want to be one the statistically rare subjects of this discovery. That said, many carbon fiber bike companies have had recalls at some level.

But lets be clear what the level is here. Specialized isn't just shipping out replacement forks as most forks are likely OK. Specialized has already determined this so they don't want to needlessly spend money and replace all questionable forks manufactured down the same assembly line during the same time frame.. An owner will have his new SL4 pride and joy tied up for a while. Bike needs to be taken to the lbs, fork removed, boxed and shipped back to Specialized where each fork will likely be X-rayed to deduce carbon layup/section integrity/any presence of cracking. A determination will be made to replace or not. This is a lot cheaper for Specialized then just sending out replacement forks which would be more expeditous for owners. But this time delay has a risk for Specialized as well in terms of time containment and/or making a misdiagnosis on a fork that is returned...once a recall is known to the public, law suits will be more prevalent. This is all part of the careful calculus.