A cracked windscreen may not seem like an emergency for a car owner, since your car can typically still drive down the road no matter the condition of the windscreen. However, it's never good to ignore this problem when your car has a crack or chip in the windscreen. You should always call for emergency glass repair instead and avoid driving until you get the windscreen repaired. Note a few reasons why this is, and why your windscreen may be more important than you realise.
1. Your safety
A car's windscreen is more important to its overall safety than you may realize; it doesn't just keep bugs out of the car, but it also holds up the weight of the roof. In a rollover accident, the windscreen is part of what keeps the roof from collapsing. During a front-end or rear-end collision, the windscreen keeps passengers in the cab of the car from flying out and suffering severe injuries or even death.
Your safety is compromised when there is a crack or chip in the windscreen, as its strength is now weakened. It could easily collapse or shatter during an accident, which means that not only does it fail to protect the passengers in the car as it should, but flying glass can add to your risk of injury.
When visibility is compromised, this too compromises your safety. A crack or chip in the windscreen can easily get in the way of you being able to see oncoming traffic or someone stepping into the street, and you could then cause a collision because of not being able to see.
2. Being ticketed
In many areas, it's against the law to drive with a cracked windscreen no matter the size of the crack or chip. The ticket can be very expensive, more so than the cost of emergency glass repair.
3. Prevention
When the windscreen has just a small chip or crack, very often this can be fixed with a resin that fills in the hole and which then dries very clear. However, if you were to ignore this problem and not call for emergency glass repair, you might cause the chip or crack to get worse so that it spreads all across the windscreen. In this case, you may then need to have your entire windscreen replaced, which is typically more costly than a quick trip to an emergency glass repair facility.
Share
