I have never thought that the front fender safety plastic add-ons to make the front fender stays disconnect for safety were that important, but I have used them anyway. Yesterday I became a true believer.

Here in southern Wisconsin all the snow has melted, getting warmer, I got my rando bike out for an exercise ride, third ride this year. Couple miles from home, I felt some form of hit and sudden noise, stopped a few hundred feet later where I could get out of the street. That is when I realized how lucky I was that I did not fly over the handlebars. I must have rode over a stick and somehow the front wheel picked it up, the stick got caught in the lower fender stay on the right side.

The fenders are about 20 years old, Zefal brand. They look like plastic but I think they are fiberglass, as they are extremely stiff. And when I drilled holes in the fender for a couple bolts to add a mud flap (cut from a Hills Brothers lid, thus is red in color), the fender did not behave at all like a piece of plastic, was as stiff as you would expect fiberglass to be.

The fender stays were designed to separate from the fender, which they both did on the left side, on the right side the lower one separated. I took a photo before I did anything to record what happened. I resized the photo to be fewer pixels (I do that with all photos I post on this forum) and using Paint I added two blue circles where the fender stays used to be attached at the fenders, and one circle showing the bend in the right side fender stay.



Second photo is cropped from the first, is shows a blue arrow pointing to where the fender stay had been attached to the fender, there is a small cutout in the fender to prevent the stay from sliding up and down.



So, yes those safety things on front fenders are there for a purpose and I learned how important they are.

It took me about five minutes to re-bend the bent stay, and re-attach the stays to the fender to finish my ride. I see no damage to spokes. Everything is back to normal.

So, be safe out there. And next time you install a pair of fenders, now you know how important those break away things are for front fender stays.

Yes, I posted this on the touring forum, not a different forum. I did that because (1) I think fenders are most prevalent on touring bikes and (2) over 90 percent of my posts are on this sub-forum. If you feel I should have posted this elsewhere, now you know why I chose to post here.

Glad you are OK. I asked Bruce Gordon about mounting fenders on my Rock and Road, and he was negative about the idea, citing exactly that scenario.

I think everybody here already knows that some fenders instead of having the disconnecting part at the stay to fender junction instead has it at the fork and stay junction. The Planet Bike fenders on my Lynskey have a plastic fitting at the fork.

For those who do not know, you can buy those fender break away tabs separately. and add them to your fenders if they did not come with them. Planet Bike sells them.