Safe Speed Forums

That having windscreen damage or an obstruction of more than 40mm is an MOT failure, yet loads of people drive around with big Satnavs stuck on their windscreens with rubber suckers?


Roger

Local authorities allow huge advertising billboards to be put up around busy junctions, even though drivers are meant to concentrate on the road. The posters look horrible and are detrimental to urban environmental quality too.

I agree! Roadside billboards are an absolute menace!

And before anybody accuses me of being too easily distracted remember that companys pay other companys a *great* deal of money to ensure that these ads are ENGINEERED to be as distracting as possible!

(I wonder if they could be held liable in the event of an accedent? Is it an offense to willfully distract drivers from the job in hand as it were)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

The screen is a structual member and accounts for about 30% of the strength of the roof. A crack reduces the structual integrity.

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Speed camera policy Kills

I think I knew that. I was thinking more of the potential obscuration of vision of say an oncoming bike, in the same way as the angle subtended by modern windscreen pillars.


Roger

A satellite navigation unit tucked low down on the windscreen may obscure a small portion of view, but in terms of distraction it cannot compare with having something dangling from the rear view mirror, swinging around right up at eye level! Must really reduuce a driver's ability to use that all-important peripheral-motion detection that nature very kindly bestowed upon us.
Didn't the craze for this start with the furry dice? Easy to deride the types that hung them of course, but now it seems that every other car has smellies, miniature football kits, and other pointless junk swinging around from the mirror.
Mind you, having said that, I work in an industry that tends not to employ people of dimmer intellect, and looking around the car park there are no rear-view mirror pendants in sight!
Ah well, lunch time rant over...

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Always remember; It is not possible to reach a destination if you do not travel fast!

I think that might be confusing the terms "strength" and "stiffness". I could believe that a screen could increase stifness by quite a lot but not strength. Also, a crack in a laminated screen is rarely in the same place on both sides of the interlayer so it is only half the screen that is cracked. I think the MOT failure is more to do with light scattering than strength or stiffness. In any case they fail on an item that can't be contained in a 10mm diameter circle in the area ahead of the driver and a 40mm circle in any of the rest of the screen area THAT IS SWEPT BY THE WIPERS. There is no failure outside the area swept by the wipers - which wouldn't make any sense if the reasons behind it were structural. Interestingly, the car SHOULD fail its MOT on a sat-nav (they say windscreen sticker or other obstruction) that can't be contained in a 40mm circle AND sits within the swept area by the wipers. So I suppose if you drive a car that was originally designed as a left hand drive and they never bothered to mirror the wiper sweep, you might be OK in the top right hand corner of the driver's side!