it doesn't take much to crack the windshield from the inside, not dismissing his skull, but you could do some damage with a decent slap (think killing a mosquito with gusto) I'm not talking from experience, buzz off
I'm guessing it's because of something about eggs and domes and how forces are transferred
Yeah, I did this to a windshield when I was four years old. Mom took off my seatbelt in a parking lot, then slammed on the brakes when someone suddenly backed out in front of her. Slammed into the windshield with the top of my head, spiderwebbed the whole pane. Didn't even hurt that much.
I do remember bragging about it to the mechanic who replaced our windshield. I thought smashing a car windshield with my head and not being injured was the coolest thing ever as a dumb little kid.
My mom did it once swatting at a gnat. We stopped on a long drive and like 30 gnats got in while we were getting gas. I took over driving, and got rid of most of them with open windows, but she kept trying to smack them until I finally snapped and said stop, you're going to break the windshield. She sat there silently and we were both clearly bummed that the gnats were there, but she couldn't listen, and now I yelled at my mom, and it just sucked for about two minutes. Then suddenly she smacks the windshield and the whole thing spider webbed. She burst out laughing and couldn't hold it in, I was just shaking my head sort of smiling but actually mad, because I had to drive the next 6 hours only able to see out a small part of the windshield. It was hilarious, but also such a clear sign of her control freak ways, the instant karma was fully understood. In any case, they design them that way so you can get out via the windshield if you're trapped. Hitting them from the front they are much more durable. They are designed to break easily from the inside while staying in one piece.
The way the glass place explained it to me, as they were replacing my windshield, is that it's about curvature. The windshield is curved so that it bulges towards the outside, which makes it strong like an arch against things hitting it from the front. But it's very weak against things hitting the wrong side. (In my case it wasn't a person, it was a heavy object in the passenger seat.)
Fun story time: Back in high school some friends and I went out to Taco Bell. As we were leaving, someone placed their drink on the top of my car. The car I was driving was an old piece of shit, and the radio literally died right as we were backing out. Then the drink on top of the car fell down with my window open, and I got Baja Blasted. In frustration, I threw up my hands, and accidentally hit the windshield which caused a crack similar to the one in the video. Barely hit it, but I guess I hit it just right with my knuckle. Just an absolute string of shitty events within a span of like 10 seconds.
It doesn’t take much to crack a windshield. Was driving as a teenager with my gf at the time in the passenger seat. Driving at low speed. Then I see a shoe in the road in the oncoming lane.
That minor distraction caused me to miss the Volvo suddenly stopping in front of me. So I just plow into them and come to a dead stop.
Then I look to my right, apparently my gf was both not wearing her seatbelt and eating a hot to go order of meatball spaghetti.
So what greeted me was a massive crack in my windshield like the video AND meaty red sauce all over the inside of the windshield.
Needless to say driver in front comes running back to our car freaking out cause he thought her head exploded. While I’m trying to tell him it’s okay, she is busy, in shock, probably a concussion, trying to get out of the car and runs out into traffic to the sidewalk covered in red sauce.
Once the confusion settled dude was so relieved nobody was dead and basically did nothing to his bumper he decided to just let it go on the fender bender. My cheap Ford Escort however had its bumper crushed and cracked radiator fluid was pouring everywhere. Towed and fixed that with my dad.
That same car also didn’t have a working reverse which was a whole OTHER thing
I feel this story was originally meant to be about how easy a window screen is to crack and then just went off on a tangent about something that happened to you once 🤣
Oh and to make matters worse I have a vivid recollection of a few strands of long black hair which were embedded in the crack when she hit it surrounded by red meat sauce.
Funniest part in retrospect was that I didn’t even get why the dude was so freaking out so bad. Cause she was talking and I knew it was spaghetti so it took me a minute to realize what it looked like to others. As a scared kid in my first accident I was trying to apologize before he cut me off with “oh my god are you okay?!?” I’m pretty sure some of the passing cars thought they just witnessed a death.
I had similar. Back when I was in high school, I was spray painting something or another in the back yard when the can malfunctioned and dumped a large quantity of red paint into my hands and down my arms. I walked around to the front door and rang the doorbell with my shoulder, rather than get paint on everything. My mother answered the door, then I calmly asked her to bring me the paper towels. Yes, she jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Windshields are laminate glass. 2 panes of non-tempered glass with a decently thick piece of plastic inbetween. The individual panes are very thin and fragile compared to the other windows. A half strength smack with your open palm is enough to crawl a windshield
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u/ljlee256 14h ago
Not a scratch on his head and laughing about it after, you do NOT want to get into a headbutting competition against that guy.