Have you ever given thought to why your vehicle’s windshield can face several different issues, from pollution to impact, yet it stays intact and promises to protect you? That’s because a car’s windshield glass is a lot different from the glass with which your house’s windows, etc. are made. The laminated glass of windshields is manufactured using two pieces of glass fused together with the help of heat and pressure. And since it’s made of multiple layers, it’s much stronger than regular glass. But if this same strong glass is cracked due to a huge impact, this can become a threat to your driving experience and your health.
In this blog, we’ve discussed some major reasons why you shouldn’t drive around with a chipped windshield.
Obstruct Your Vision
The biggest reason you shouldn’t drive around with a chipped windshield is that it obstructs your vision. This is something you will notice yourself once you sit behind the wheels of a car that has a chipped windshield. This is something you need to fix as soon as possible because this will have a very negative impact on your driving experience and may even result in dangerous accidents. While driving, you always need to ensure your vision is absolutely clear, and a chipped windshield causes problems with that.
Affects Car’s Integrity
One of the most critical tasks performed by your car’s windshield is that it lends about 40% of structural integrity to your car’s roof. When this glass is chipped, that structural strength weakens, and that makes it hard for the windshield to perform its life-saving function of providing support to the roof of the vehicle.
Windshield Cracks Spread with Time
In some vehicles, owners ignore the need to fix this issue, mainly due to the amount it costs, and hence they just continue driving the car with the chipped glass, saying it’s just a minor glitch. But this can become a major issue, not only because it affects the car’s integrity, but also because even a minor crack can spread over time and become a bigger issue. And this is another reason you need to fix this issue when it occurs because getting a smaller chip fixed costs a lot less than getting a bigger crack fixed.
Shattering Glass
Windshields are made of laminated glass, which is designed to hold glass pieces together in the instance of breakage so that they don’t result in sharp shards, unlike with regular glass. But this is only possible in windshields without any previous damage, meaning if your vehicle’s windshield is cracked, the glass will shatter in the case of a collision and the flying pieces of glass can cause severe injuries. Hence, chipped glass is unsafe for you and your vehicle’s passengers.
Affects Airbag Deployment
The windshield, apart from providing integrity, also helps with the effective deployment of airbags when a vehicle experiences a major accident. If the windshield is cracked, this effectiveness is impacted negatively, as it can lead to the malfunctioning of the airbag deployment feature, making the vehicle’s passengers even more vulnerable to injury.
These are all the biggest reasons why you can’t be driving around with a chipped windshield. Even a small crack can lead to bigger issues, making your windshield more or less defenseless against potential threats that come with collisions and accidents. If you want to learn more about this or any other issues, contact the experts at Toyota Creek Motors.
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