Laminated Vs. Tempered Safety Glass

At Duran's Auto Glass, we really enjoy working what we do, and that is, installing and repairing auto glass. We also love answering questions about what we do. One common question about auto glass that comes up has to do with laminated vs tempered safety glass. Why do automobiles use these two different types of auto glass?

Let's picture this. There is a car accident nearby. A Nissan Altima steers right, pass the safety rail, and heads straight into a lake in order to avoid crashing onto a car whose driver was texting and driving. Few seconds later after going inside the lake, the passengers of the Altima realize that they have to get out as soon as possible. The passengers unbuckle their seat belts and try to open the doors. Soon they realize that this is  very hard to do. They then realize that they have to break the windows open in order to escape.

Now, image that all of the auto's windows were made out of laminated glass. As we learned in the previous post, laminated auto glass is made out of two layers of plate glass with plastic laminate in between. This type of glass is design to keep objects from easily getting inside the vehicle. That is why laminated auto glass is used for windshields.

However, let's say that laminated glass was used for all of the windows in our Nissan Altima accident. As the passengers would get their hands on any solid item and would try to break the side windows, they would soon realize that the auto glass would not break into tiny pieces. Instead, it would hold together because of the laminate. Several valuable minutes may be wasted, which may put the passengers' lives in serious peril.

Thus, as we can see, laminated glass was intended to help keep objects (and Paparazzis) from entering inside of the vehicles, and not the other way around.

To learn more about us, visit our website at www.duransautoglass.com. We serve the entire bay area, from San Francisco to Oakland, to San Rafael, to windshield replacement in San Pablo CA.