How Safe Is The Glass In Our Car?



Have you ever wondered how safe the windshield in your car is? Or even the side windows, simply because that's where your loved ones sit? Well let's look a little bit more into the safety of our lives in our cars. The first thing we need to understand is that there are two kinds of safety glass.

Windshield

The windshield in our car is made of a material called laminated glass. But how does it work, and what happens to the glass when you break it? Laminated glass is made by taking plastic and glass, and merging the two together. So you can look at the process in a very simple way as taking a piece of glass, and sticking plastic on top of the sheet of glass. Then you take another piece of glass and sandwich that on top of the plastic layer. This process is called sandwiching the glass. Once this is done the plastic layer, or sometimes layers, keeps the glass together once broken. Laminated auto glass is very flexible. The plastic layer helps keep you in the car when you ?forgot to wear your seat belt?. Another very important part of laminated glass is that the glass stops 97% of the UV rays that come from the sun. And have you ever notice that the sound inside your car is so much less than outside the car? Laminated glass reduces the sound levels tremendously. So in all, we can safely assume that the safety glass in our windshield is absolutely safe.

back window

For the back window and side windows, a different kind of glass is used. This glass is called tamperproof glass. Have you ever broken a glass plate, or a long drinking glass? When this kind of glass hits the ground it shatters in to a million pieces small and big. Now, with tampered glass this does not happen. Tampered glass is designed to shatter in to little pebbles of glass. This shattering occurs without leaving sharp edges on the little pebbles of glass, making them in turn, almost harmless. But how does this work? And how can you see if your auto glass is tamperproof? In order to make tamperproof glass, workers in the factory take a piece of glass and super heat the glass sheet, then this sheet of glass is rapidly cooled down. This process is repeated until the right hardness is achieved. This process is called tampering the glass. You can see the difference in tamperproof glass and normal glass by looking at the glass in a 90 degree angle. If the glass is tamperproof, you should be able to see tamper lines.

So when the question of safety comes up in your mind, just sit back and know that the glass in your vehicle is as safe as we can make it. Furthermore, if you are ever involved in a car accident, rest assured that the glass will do its job.