Originally Posted by movelo

Agreed. And...a bent fork does not have to actually fail (by breaking) to be dangerous. With insufficient rake, your front end can rather quickly develop a wicked high speed shimmy, especially if you have one hand on the bars by the stem and the other hand reaching for a water bottle, nearing bottom on a steep descent. Which is what happened to me after I collided with a big labrador.

The lab was OK but my light steel criterium fork was not. The onset of the high speed shimmy was so fast I could not regain control, and took a bad high speed tumble. OK handling at low speed does not necessarily extrapolate to high speed stability. Am now accepting Darwin Award nominations for a) riding with a bent fork and b) bad refreshment timing.