BOISE, Idaho — Cars these days have all sorts of safety measures: traction control, airbags everywhere, seat belts.
Tempered safety glass is designed to shatter into small, dull pieces to protect passengers in a crash.
“It shatters into a million little pieces, and it’s gone,” said Brent Heaton, owner of Integrity Auto Glass.
Windshields are different. They’re made with a thin sheet of plastic between layers of glass — a laminate — to prevent shattering while driving.
Now, some manufacturers are using the same laminated glass on side windows to help reduce road noise.
Learn how to tell if YOUR car's side windows are made with laminate glass —
But laminated glass is nearly impossible to break. Heaton demonstrated by striking a pane repeatedly with a special glass punch — leaving only small dents and no breakage.
That can become a serious safety issue if a vehicle goes into water and you need to escape.
Rescue personnel are equipped to cut through laminated glass, but even for them, it takes longer.
"If it’s tempered, pop — we go, 'OK!' If it’s laminated, we have to work a bit harder to get through that," said Don Matchette, senior firefighter at the Nampa Fire Department.
If you’re alone and end up in the water, knowing what kind of windows your car has is critical.
“Obviously, panic sets in at that point,” Heaton said. “You may not know which door glass — you’ll just try to break the closest one to you.”
That could waste valuable time.
“You just need to know so you can take appropriate action — which door glass am I going to break if I need to break one?” Heaton said.
You can check by looking at the stamp in the bottom corner of your window. It will say either “tempered” or “laminated.”
The label can be hard to spot, but all auto glass is required to have one. You can also roll the window down and look for a faint line through the middle — a sign it’s laminated.
If your front side windows are laminated, Heaton said your best escape option in an emergency is to move to the back seat and break one of those windows, which are rarely laminated.
