Seatbelts, airbags and impact absorbing materials found in and on your vehicle, including the windshield, are all part of a safety network, commonly referred to as the vehicle’s Safety Restraint System, or SRS. All the individual components of the Safety Restraint System are dependent on each other, so if there is a compromise in just one aspect of the SRS, it will likely lead to a complete failure of the rest of the system.

It is well known that seatbelts and airbags are dependent upon one another in order to provide full support in the event of an accident. Additionally, most of your vehicle’s safety features are also dependent upon the windshield. For example, the windshield provides support for your vehicle’s airbags (the passenger airbag in particular). Without this support, the airbag would be incapable of being fully deployed and any protection the airbag was meant to provide would be compromised. Alternatively, the windshield plays a major role in the structural integrity of your vehicles passenger compartment, especially in the event of a rollover. If the windshield is unstable, it may very well fail in the event of a rollover accident, causing the passenger compartment to fall in on itself, putting the vehicle’s occupants at extreme risk of injury or death.

We all want to be sure that we are driving in a safe vehicle. We consider our vehicle’s most obvious safety features, such as seatbelts, airbags, tire pressure, and tire tread. We all strive to ensure that these items are kept up to standard, both to prevent accidents from occurring, as well as to protect us to the full extent in the event of an accident.

However, one of the most overlooked, yet one of the most important safety features of your car, truck, or van is the one that is literally right in front of your eyes. Your vehicles windshield plays a vital role in the prevention of injury or death in the event of a collision and/or rollover. In fact, most automotive safety experts rank the windshield as the third most important safety component in your vehicle – directly behind seatbelts and airbags.

Windshields are designed to operate in conjunction with your vehicle’s airbags. Properly installed windshields provide support to the back of the airbag, sustaining it and allowing it to fully deploy into the occupant compartment, rather than into the dash.  If the structural integrity of the windshield has been compromised, it may cause the airbags to only partially deploy or to not deploy at all, dramatically increasing the chances of serious injury or death in the event of an accident.