Has anyone had any experiences with catastrophic disc brake failure? Fortunately this hasn’t happened to me but it’s something that always runs through my mind on 15%+ grade descents on the 36er with 127mm cranks- I know if my brake suddenly gave out it would be really ugly 
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I’ve had slow leaks and gradual loss of braking power before- but never anything sudden like a hydraulic line disconnect. I’m curious to know if this fear is grounded in real risk.
It would be the same risk with hydraulic rim brakes. And even with mechanical brakes your bowden wire could rip.
I only had a slow leak once on my disc brake.
Just about every mountain bike out there now has a disc brake. I’m sure failures do occur, but they have to be very rare.
If it was an issue worth being concerned with, you’d see mtb’s with something different. They are harder on brakes than we can ever hope to be.
I only ride mechanical brakes. On one of my freewheel unicycles my D’Brake snapped, trashing my caliper and rotor but the resulting UPD was surprisingly minor. That’s why I only use a disc tab on them now. I have D’Brakes on my fixed wheel unicycles with brakes and try to give them the once over once in a while.
Forgot to mention in my post but the D’Brake mount snapping is what I imagine might happen. My whole 36er vibrates like crazy if I don’t dampen it by holding the touring handle with both hands. All that vibration seems to be going right through the D’Brake mount…
Im sure how much back pedal pressure if one were using at the same time braking would have different results in a light or severe UPD.
And of course which correlates to speed also…