Windshield Facts

Imagine driving in your car without it. Your windshield that is. The wind at your face, blowing through your hair while you wiz down the road at high speeds. Sounds pretty neat huh? Fortunately, the piece of glass in front of you, while you drive, is one of the most important safety features of all cars today. Without it, stones, debris, weather, chickens and other road hazards would do some serious damage to you and other passengers.

What is a windshield you may ask. Well, it's two pieces of float glass with a plastic laminate sheet sandwiched between the glass. The reason for all this is safety. Windshields, which hold a ASA-1 rating, can and must withstand impact ratings. That means that if a stone hits your window it will not penetrate the glass, even if you are going at high speeds. The main reason for windshield breakage is due to the stone getting between the treads of tires and are flung in the air bouncing off the road and into the glass. The glass, depending on the angle of the hit and how fast you are going, can get damaged.

Many people are amazed that one cold winter day or hot summer day, they came out to the car and all of a sudden they notice a long crack running through the windshield. It is not a happy experience. They wonder how this happened and they are concerned for their safety. Many people ask their glass expert how it happened when they go to get it replaced. The answer is simple. The windshield at some point had a small crack or bruise. Glass is very susceptible to quick changes in temperature. For example, one cold winter morning you get into your car to warm it up. When you turned on your vehicle you hit the defrost button on to take the ice, snow of frost off your windshield. Due to the fast expansion of the glass, the defect in the window started to run into a crack. The other scenario is the heat of summer. You drove to the supermarket with the A/C on. You get out of the car and shop for one hour. The range of temperature went from say 70 degrees to almost 200 degrees. Yes, you literally can fry an egg on the dashboard in this situation. The quick change of temperature with cars that have a stone chip or bruise or defective windshield can fail and break.

At this point either with a stone bruise or cracked windshield, your safety is being compromised. Even though the windshield will not cave in on you, it is not exactly safe and can pose as a dangerous situation. As vehicle manufacturers started to streamline cars using uni-body designs, which now the car has no main frame, windshields now perform a very important safety factor for the structural integrity of the car. All cars must now ass certain roll over tests, and as the car manufacturer, lightened the weight of the vehicle, they made the windshield an important factor in roll over safety. With a cracked or stone bruised windshield, you are now compromising the structure of that roll over safety. Let me give you an example. Take an egg. Place 2 fingers on the top and bottom of the egg. Now, squeeze with all your might. What happened? Nothing, right? Yes, Mother Nature created the perfect non breakable structure so that when mother hen sat on it the wrong way, it would not break. however, now take a needle and poke it through the egg. Just like the stone in the windshield. You have now compromised its integrity. Now take your fingures to the egg and squeeze again. Oops... you now have egg all over our hands. The same theory is being used in windshield glass, and God forbid you get in an accident and roll. Your windshield better be free of bruises and cracks.