PhilipG: The next question of course is why was the bracket designed in this what now appears to be "fail deadly" way?....
Geez, designers do not intend brackets or other things to fail...some problems take a while to be known and some are manageable until fixed. No one wants to introduce a known faulty design (except perhaps the designers of Ford Explorer "Exploder" I owned, I am convinced they must have designed faults into that thing to make me buy a new one every few years, or frequent trips to their service department...)