Windscreen Damage - Who's to blame

Hey Phil,

I'd class it as an accident.

Cheers, ToNy!

Mate of mine broke his on the Birdsville track and there was no one around !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seems a stone was thrown up from front wheel and did an acrobatic stunt and came back and hit the screen and broke it !!!!!!!! LOL

Its a pain in the backside when it happens but unless something physically falls of a load or someone drives off the road then I guess it is an accident. Every windscreen I have had broken was broken driving in the city not the outback.

Hopefully your insurance will cover with no loss of no claim.

See ya Monday night?

I think this is one of those things that is just say... all too hard, so they let you have a free one each year or something.

If you were following a car, and say... his bumper bar assembly fell of, and you ran over it, and sustained damage, then I guess, he would be responsible.

Same car, same day, same road, and the car ran over say... a cardboard box that was windblown onto the road, and it lodged in your grill, and your car overheated, I guess you couldn't really sue the car.

I am thinking the same would go for stones, because they don't belong to the car, but belong to the road.

Unfenced road sides... if you hit stock, you sometimes can sue the property owner. Unfenced... to bad.

Now, come to think of it, I haven't really give you an answer, have I...

If I run over a pedestrian, because he walked when the little flashing light said "DONT WALK", who pays for the cleaning and re-polishing of my bullbar? Sorry... couldn't resist, and YES, to all those do-gooders... I have bit hit by a car whilst walking.

Cheers

Wolfie

Hi Phil

On the road or the track, i guess you have to put it down to an accident and these things happen. But if you drive past a golf course and the first place the little white ball lands straight from the 1 wood is your windscreen and you and your partner think you have been shot cause you have bloodbleepout of you because broken glass in your body and your partner is freaking, blame the golf course.

We broke ours recently and the insurance does not cover windscreens in vic..... I must get that fixed.

Hey, all you guys are sitting on the fence!

OK, I raise the question because pretty much everyone I've heard of who breaks a windscreen blames the oncoming vehicle because they were driving too fast and throwing up stones............Fair or Not???

Or.... is it the speed at which your vehicle travels that causes the damage?

Phil

Phil,
Some class this as an accident, but in my experience it's the AH coming in the other direction who won't slow down.
The same also applies to overtaking. Just recently we were between Birdsville and Boulia when this lunatic came charging up behind us. I called him up on the UHF and let him know we were slowling down to let them pass. Did he slow down? not on your life. I now have a 4wd damaged by stones.
Regards
Kim

Simple: SOL Accident (bleepouta luck)

OK, The windscreen damage depends on how hard the stone hits the windscreen.

The stone gets flicked out sideways so it has no velocity towards your vehicle.

So in my opinion, while its the speed of the other vehicle that causes stones to flick up, its actually the speed of your vehicle that causes the damage.

Why do most people continue to swear at the other driver and blame them for the damage???

Pulling over and slowing down on dirt roads is what stops you breaking windscreens.

Debate??

thats what insurance is for

The likelihood of windscreen damage is proportional to the number of stones thrown towards to you, the mass of the stones, and the square of the speed at which they hit.

The number of stones is determined by the speed of the oncoming vehicle and how far apart the cars are when they pass. A faster vehicle is tossing up more stones and to a greater height.

The mass of the stones is a characteristic of the road. Sometimes even 10 mm crushed gravel can chip or crack glass if it hits fast enough. The mass of a stone is proportional to the cube of its diameter. A one inch stone weighs 27 times as much as 10 mm crushed gravel.

The speed at which stones hit you is mostly determined by how fast you are going, given that the stones mostly flick out sideways when the tyre runs over them.

A big stone will damage your glass even if you slow to 20 kph.

So in physics, both cars are to blame. In law, which has nothing to do with physics, fairness, justice, commonsense or anything else for that matter, it sounds like it is 'tough bickies baby'

The moral of the story is that bush travellers should slow down as they pass other vehicles so as to reduce windscreen damage. If there is coarse gravel or rocks they should slow down even more. The sad fact is that the vehicle not slowing down isn't the one likely to sustain damage, and it is usually driven by someone who is either stupid, or doesn't own the vehicle and couldn't give a toss.

Phil,

No one is to blame...it's just life on a gravel road! wrong place, wrong time, wrong size. And it is definitely not classed as an accident as some believe. . If you tried to report it to the local police they'd tell you to go away. (so long as it was a stone and not a foreign object/load)

Daz

I thought etiquette was that both slowed - the commonsense being to retain better control of the vehicle and to reduce stones thrown into the path of the other vehicle.

EV700

Phil

On the "main" outback roads I cruise at 80-120 depending on the road condition. When a vehicle approaches I slow down to about 60 and get as far over to the left as I can (while dodging the big marbles).
I slow down to reduce the impact speed and move over to try and dodge the impact altogether.

Doing this would probably add 15minutes to a days outback driving.

There is no "accident" that is ever 100% the "blame" of one party and 0% the blame of the other. (Assuming 2 parties here but obviously there can be more or less)

My point is that if you receive a broken windscreen from a stone that pops up from the vehicle coming the other way, you have some degree of "fault" just because you are there. The other vehicle also has some degree of "fault" because it is there.

If you could prove that the driver of the other vehicle deliberately caused the stone to flick up, you might succeed in an action against him, but this type of issue is considered an "act of god". (An unsafe load is a different case)

Moving on to what causes the windscreen to break, it is a function of the mass of the stone, its speed, and its impact angle relative to the same factors from your vehicle, which generate an impact force sufficient to cause the glass to break.

So, in simple terms, if you are doing 80 and the stone is doing 80 the impact speed is 160, and the result will be the same as if you are doing 50 and the stone is doing 110. You can test this at home by hitting a piece pf glass with a hammer, and then hitting the hammer with a piece of glass the same size - the glass will break just the same in both cases!

Thanks everyone for their responses.
Sorry to have some confusion in the title - wasn't interested in "liability" or insurance, just interested in what is most likely to cause a broken windscreen, and how they can be avoided. And it interests me that most people blame the oncoming driver.

My conclusion is that you, personally have no control over what the other guy does.

But by slowing down, you will reduce the velocity at which a stone impacts on your windscreen, and by pulling over to the side, you reduce the chance of a stone coming straight at you.

So YOU can avoid the majority of chipped and broken windscreens, and if you break one, you can take a lot of the blame yourself. Hardest ones to avoid are the ones when travelling on bitumen.

Just my opinion.
Cheers
Phil