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Having watched a burly firefighter take three good swings with an axe to bust out a window (to get to the hood release of an unattended car fire), I am extremel
by mauvehaus 5y ago
Having watched a burly firefighter take three good swings with an axe to bust out a window (to get to the hood release of an unattended car fire), I am extremely skeptical of this claim.
Somebody on YouTube tested those emergency hammers and concluded they're basically useless. If you really want to break a tempered glass car window (I.e., any of them but the windshield), their recommendation was an automatic center punch.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoYou’re supposed to do it like this: https://youtu.be/tZTa8Nh0VlE https://youtu.be/tZTa8Nh0VlE
- senortumnus 5y agoThis reminds me of the spark plug ceramic demos. Little ceramic tip on a spark plug (isolated from the rest of the plug) make an effective car window smashing projectile. No idea if it would work from inside the car / if you could get enough speed on it sitting right next to the window! https://www.reddit.com/r/mythbusters/comments/130js6/breaking_glass_with_a_fragment_of_a_spark_plug_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mythbusters/comments/130js6/breakin...
- ayemiller 5y agoTechnically it's not the tip of a spark plug, but a shard of the ceramic insulator when shattered- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_rocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_rocks
- brokenmachine 5y agoSo they crush a spark plug to get the "rocks"? How?
- kingcharles 5y agoWatch this... this made me realize how tough car windows really are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L91_K-s4pMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L91_K-s4pMM
- djmips 5y agoWindshield even more so.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoI believe your windshield is an integral part of your car's rollover protection
- mywittyname 5y agoThe Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards have a lot to say on the strength, composition, and properties of glass in passenger vehicles. In addition to being very difficult to break, it must also be resistant to shattering and remain in place while experiencing some pretty extreme forces. Automotive glass is not even glass really, it's more of a composite made up of layers of various transparent materials all designed to counter balance the weaknesses of the other layers. And windshields are bonded into the body of the vehicle with a very strong plastic adhesive.
- boppo1 5y agoare these specs public somewhere? Sounds cool.
- plattenbau 5y agoNope. Unlike some better fields, the auto industry is incredibly tight-lipped about safety and crash structures. If these informal standards were to get out... and if the public were to know how well the industry has cornered the regulators, creating pseudo-standards that technically conform to safety protocols but functionally make no difference to consumer/passenger safety... there'd be riots.
- Aloha 5y agoI've carried a hatchet in my car for years for this reason.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jes 5y agoRight. As a firefighter, I carried a spring-loaded center-punch in the pocket of my bunker coat. No muss, no fuss. Just put the tip on a side window and press until it fires.
- boppo1 5y agoI have heard keeping a shattered sparkplug inyour car can help. Something about them auto-shatters glass.
- mlindner 5y ago> Having watched a burly firefighter take three good swings with an axe to bust out a window (to get to the hood release of an unattended car fire), I am extremely skeptical of this claim. Wrong window. You're talking about the windshield which is a completely different type of glass than other windows.
- mauvehaus 5y agoHe was trying to break the side window. Tempered glass is super tough, until you damage the outer layer. Presumably the pick end of his fire axe wasn't sharp or hard enough to scratch that outer layer without a hell of a swing behind it.
- fdjsafdsjl 5y agoDepends if you are trying to break the window from the inside or the outside. It's very difficult from the outside, and much easier from the inside (I cracked my windscreen and needed a replacement, because I was carrying a long piece of wood and it moved a little and contacted the windscreen).
- mauvehaus 5y agoTwo things: 1) Are you me? I've done exactly this because I knew that my car fit a 10' board. Turns out when you're buying rough lumber 10' sometimes means 10' 2". 2) The windshield is laminated glass instead of tempered. It'll crack much more easily, but it'll (more or less) stay in one piece in the frame instead of shattering out into a million tiny bits.
- nyolfen 5y agobreaking the windshield is the cheapest option to replace