[roflchoppa]

Whats weird is that I know of at least 8 “modern cars” 2018+ that all have had cracked windshields.

3 of them are mine, my 2002 car has taken huge rocks like a champ…

Its big glass im telling you, esp because the recalibration stuff for Assistive Steering is like 7-800 bucks.

[tforcram]

Similar experience with a 2010 Honda Odyssey, drove it for 10 years and never saw a crack even though I'm sure it took a beating.

Then we got a 2022 Passport and I swear every single trip has a new crack or chip. I was surprisingly fortunate to be talked into the windshield warranty as the sales guy has been through this exact thing and replacing these windshields with assistive tech is expensive. That warranty has already paid for itself and more including once full windshield replacement.

[cobertos]

Huh, odd. I have a car with assistive controls and they also tried to talk me into this warranty but I declined. They mentioned replacement would require extra money.

I did end up getting a windshield replacement shortly after purchase (like 6 months into ownership a rock came out of a truck and hit my windshield). I got it replaced for the normal $100-$200 not from the dealership and the vision system has had no issues.

[t0mas88]

The table from the report shows that the tools do crack the window but don't break it. Which is probably the main difference between old glass and the newer layered glass? If you crack an outer layer it is no longer usable, but you can't escape through it.

[inkyoto]

Laminated glass does not prevent routine stone chip events – if a tiny fragment of the stone becomes wedged in the outer ply or at the laminate interface at a tension point and, coupled with the temperature difference (inside the cabin vs ambient), cabin pressure and body flex that often place higher tensile stress lower on the windscreen, the crack can start propagating very quickly.

That was my experience earlier in the year: I was driving alongside a large fuel tanker on a city road when a tiny stone chip, probably thrown up from under the tanker’s tyres, struck the front windscreen. It took about an 1 ½ hour for the initially invisible crack to spread into an irreparable 30 cm one – effectively right in front of my eyes – and the windscreen had to be replaced. Lesson learned: do not drive anywhere near large trucks or fuel tankers or maintain a larger distance.

But the laminated glass will prevent the structural collapse of the windshield and will also prevent the occupants from being showered with glass shards. It is also more likely that the windshield will withstand an impact from a large stone, leaving a localised and static crack that can be repaired with resin.

[simoncion]

> ...and will also prevent the occupants from being showered with glass shards.

Hasn't it been the case for a long time now that glass in automobiles is coated so that it breaks into small, generally-square fragments, rather than shards?

I've never smashed a window myself, but every couple of months, I see the remains of a window smashing on the sidewalk... it's always a pile of small, generally-square fragments.

My memory tells me that this design was mandated long ago because folks would get shards embedded in them effectively forever. One of my parents related a story that one of the parents up the tree would irregularly have to extract migrating glass shards breaking through the skin of his face that had been embedded during an automobile accident many years prior. But, perhaps that story is bullshit and completely fabricated, IDK.

[recursivecaveat]

That's tempered glass which breaks into the safer fragments. Still not completely safe obviously, especially if stuff is getting thrown around violently in an accident. The bigger safety case for laminated glass though is since it sticks together your body or limbs can't fly out through it in a rollover accident (even if belted can happen on the sides). There's also some fringe benefits: noise isolation, UV protection, and supposedly more annoying for thieves.

[daemonologist]

> the recalibration stuff for Assistive Steering is like 7-800 bucks

Yeesh at that point I'd just be buying a Comma.

[rogerrogerr]

Usually the glass companies force you to pay it. For “safety”. It’s just a “you have a nice car so we’re gonna charge you more” fee.

I’ll probably be doing my own windshield on my Tesla to avoid this. Safelight has decent prices but whacks you with a huge fee for pressing “calibrate” in the service menu, which is user accessible.

[roflchoppa]

Hold up you can calibrate it yourself? I was under the impression you need additional hardware jigs to align cameras to fixed points, similar to a steering alignment.

[HWR_14]

Much like cell phone screens, altering the glass to make catastrophic failures less likely makes cracking more likely.

[walletdrainer]

Hey, it could be worse. I had the windshield on my newish S-class start smoking and quickly crack after.