As Bob said, the US is a very litigious society and I represent a retailer who sells tons of low end bikes that some would call trash, some that are even carbon. I've seen virtually any type of bike claim where the rider implicates design, manufacture, or assembly; and I work with lots of experts and testing centers to analyze failures, in most cases trying to figure out whether the failure was pre- or post- crash. Because I represent the retailer, I have every incentive to implicate the design or manufacture as being the cause of the crash, as opposed to final assembly. In most cases, we cannot find a design or manufacturing problem. The first thing I do is jump on consumer safety wathdog sites and see whether there have been recalls or prior reported failures. Upon forensic analysis, We find lots of post crash damage, maintenance issues, and rider error. It's one thing to post a picture of an "asploaded" frame on the internet and claim it just gave out, it's different when you get the frame on the lab and analyze where the forces came from.
I'm sure carbon frame failures exist, but it's not a "real' problem in any sense. They are exceedingly rare. A safe cheap bicycle is not a particularly difficult engineering problem for mass production anywhere in the world. Let's take Dorel, a company that imports and markets cheap mass produced bikes internationally. Are you going to want to race with it, no? Do people all over South America, Indonesia, Thailand, and elsewhere use these cheap bikes every day for virtually everything you can imagine, yes. These same bikes are marketed and imported in the US as Schwinns or Mongoose (Pacific) and are sold in mass retailers all over without safety issues. They also sell cheap carbon frames. Giant is the largest manufacturer in the world and sells lots of safe value bicycles. The Brazilian or African Guy riding a cheap bike to work every day is not riding a Bianchi. It takes way more abuse than a bike ridden in the first world.
Even the NYT article on the so-called danger of Carbon Frames was garbage. No data, just rumors and andectdotes from unnamed sources about the danger of Carbon. Believe me, my colleagues on the other side of the v. and folks like me looking to pin the blame away from my clients and onto manufacturers would be all over he so-called defects in carbon, particularly as it filters down to the value bicycles.
