When I look at risk planning, I take into account both the likelihood and the consequences of something occurring. It sounds like our experiences are in agreement on likelihood - though it also sounds like you have individual Aero spokes: http://www.wheelbuilder.com/images/D...blk_250-02.jpg and I have an integrated Aerospoke wheel: http://www.citygrounds.com/prodimages/900-DEFAULT-l.jpg

When it comes to consequences, I've been touring where some less than likely events have happened - for example on two different trips in college, I had a fellow rider cycle into a stationary object [once a bollard, once a parked car]. The metal wheeled rim transferred shock to the frame and she was able to continue only because we traded out that frame for a whole new bike donated to her [a different story]. The aluminum wheeled rim ended up with severely mangled rim we could "fix" well enough to cycle a few miles where we got a new rim respoked. On a different occasion, on a Ride the Rockies ride, I saw a rather spectacular failure of a carbon fiber fork after rider came into impact with stationary object [this time another rider].

So I don't know exact consequences of failure in a composite together integrated wheel, that also has its own special hub and potentially bringing in other components as well - but past experience suggests if it were to fail (however unlikely), then I might be looking at replacing the entire integrated setup rather than just a part [hub, rim, spokes,...] and hence my comment.

Lower probability/higher consequence risks are tougher to plan for - and I'm not always 100% consistent. Some low likelihood risks I'll just ignore. In some other cases such as using 48 spoke wheels, I've accepted a higher consequence of difficulty in replacing the rim vs. a lower likelihood of rim failure [and had such a failure in NZ where I did replace entire rim/hub/spoke when just the hub component failed and switched to 36-spoke wheel]. Some of that is also based on having three separate 36-spoke wheels fail when cycling across Canada.

For my aerospoke wheels since I already have them, I also wouldn't hesitate to use them to cycle across US or most developed countries with reasonable roads. I probably wouldn't take that bike the length of the Great Divide Mountain bike route - and probably not in some parts of the developing world. If I had a choice on outfitting a new bike just for crossing the US, I would probably also shy away from them, which was also how I replied in original comment.