You mean that the picture is genuine? I can’t believe that we spend so much money on those things which seem to turn out to be rubbish. I wonder how many others will fail in the same way.
They certainly are ‘silly’. Would anyone in their right mind go out on a road in one of those? After all, you probably wouldn’t even have all the additional benefits, rights and protections given to cyclists these days.
The Gypsies come down “Nine Mile Ride”, near me, and they love to drive their little trotter horse carts, very slowly in front of all the traffic.
I’d love to get in front of them in one of these little adult toys!
The ones I have seen have had the blades broken. This one looks like melted plasticine. I don’t think it is real. .
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Yes, broken not melted.
The blades are manufactured from a mix of materials, using a composite mix of glass matting, carbon fibre, and plastic. It’s a unique material that gives the blades the strength and durability to do its job; but they can and do fail by collapsing when the carbon fibre lets go by folding past its limits. A Danish company Vestas makes them not far from me on Isle of W and if anyone get the chance, I can recommend a visit.
But melting ?
Why would they do that?
Possible I suppose. But probable?
@Besoeker , Not sure, but acetone is the only thing l know that can disolve
plastics in that way, and it can’t get on there by accident ??
But, it may still be a manufacturing fault ?
Interesting though l think ?
Donkeyman! 
Maybe been placed in a safe configuration pending the appropriate removal crane or whatever being brought to site.
I don’t think the rotor blades are plastic.
They’re not. They’re composite, hollow, and actually laid-up in a very complex manner such as to distribute the dynamic loads along the blade.
I think I read somewhere that in the USA they had 40 failures in 40000 turbines some years ago. so failures are rare. What is that 0.001%? I am pretty sure that I also read that they are 98% reliable ie 2% downtime.
There are plenty of videos of failures on YouTube mostly repeating the same incidents - failure seems rare but occasionally spectacular
Good points Sir.
@ThemArtful Todger, Yep, but what binds the composites together ??
For instance fibreglass is bonded with resins !!
However l think it was a manufacturing fault or was damaged on installation ?
Donkeyman! 
Apparently wind turbine failure is more common that we thought Brucy…
Quote:
Reliability of wind turbines has improved with time and has achieved an availability of 98%, but wind turbines fail at least once per year, on average, with larger wind turbines failing relatively more frequently.7 A recent study of US wind turbines found that when all sources of downtime are accounted for, the average wind turbine actively generates power for 1.5 days between downtime events and that the average downtime is 1.6 hours.10