As the technology used to make autos safer over the past few years has developed, it has increased the cost of changing your vehicle’s windshield. Think about all the features now available for your car: Lane Departure Warning, Auto Braking, Automatic Windshield Wipers, Automatic Defog, Heads up display. All these features have something in common. They all rely on sensors that are mounted to your vehicle windshield. The Lane departure sensor usually has a small triangular shaped attachment at the top of your windshield that holds a camera. The camera is sending the view of the road back to a vehicle computer “watching” the way the car is driving in the lane. Automatic wipers have a rain sensor usually mounted near the rear view mirror which monitors the refraction of light from the windshield surface, this tells the vehicle when there is moisture on the windshield (presumably from rain) and triggers a response from the wipers. Depending on your vehicle options and settings, it may automatically start the wipers, or it may adjust the speed or delay time. Automatic Defog has a condensation sensor mounted on the windshield to monitor for the presence of condensation on the glass, and turn on the defrost automatically when needed.
Additionally, your vehicle may be equipped with an acoustic dampening layer in the windshield to help reduce road noise and wind noise in the cabin of the vehicle. It may have a heated wiper park area for those icy mornings and who knows what will be added to your windshield next? The point is, when you get a small nick in your windshield now, so much more expense may be at stake than before. For some new vehicles, changing the windshield can cost thousands of dollars! Getting that small nick or chip in your windshield is often unavoidable, there is simply no way to avoid hitting a small stone flying at you that fast. Even if you could see it in time and had enough time to respond, chances are good that there would be too many other cars on the road for you to do anything about it! But after it happens, get your windshield repaired before that small chip or crack grows and becomes too large to repair. For many drivers with comprehensive insurance coverage, the windshield can be repaired for no out of pocket expense, so why wait? call your local Auto Glass shop today and get that chip fixed!
