Here's Rashmi's story, in SuperBike magazine.
This, boys and girls, is why I swapped out my forks.
BMW claims that they've never heard of this before, but ADVrider.com came up with at least six different riders who've had the exact same failure, some of whom have never had prior crashes or any off-road "down time".
Plus, BMW itself changed the fork design radically in 2003 at exactly this failure point. There have been no reports of fork failures on the 2003+ fork model.
So, was swapping my forks for the 2003+ model the cheapest thing I've ever done? No, of course not, but it wasn't the spendiest, either. And knowing that I've put my bike through everything Rashmi did (and maybe more, offroad) and she still had this happen to her while riding down a smooth paved road….that piece of mind has been worth every penny.
Though she DID look pretty punk-ass in that hot black forearm cast…. *giggles, ducks, and runs*