The Lost World of Friese-Greene

Apr 25, 2006 44 Replies

When someone smashed my side windows, the car was parked in the street outside my house and I was sitting in the front room (windows closed and curtains drawn - it was night). There was no explosive bang. It sounded like someone kicking a large cardboard box down the street, and it was pub closing time so I didn't think much of it. I found out it was my car windows when a neighbour returning from walking his dog rang my doorbell to tell me.

It looked as though the damage had been done with the round end of a ball pein hammer - there was that size of hole in each side window. Whoever had done it didn't try to get into the car; they just chose to smash the windows as they walked past them.

I wanted the police to catch whoever did it and bring them to me so that I could shove every last crumb of toughened glass that now littered my upholstery up his nostrils. But of course, all I got was a crime reference number.

Jim

Up his nostrils? That's not where *I* would have put the glass.

I was being polite. Mixed company, you know?

Jim

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Plowman (News)" saying something like:

Early laminated screens fell into disfavour after a series of 'horse-collar' injuries put people off buying them. When toughened glass was introduced it suited buyers better, but safety was never really a strong selling point anyway - if the horse-collared folk had been in cars fitted with seat belts (a rarity at the time) the injuries wouldn't have happened to the same extent. The later generation of laminated screens were much improved over their predecessors, with a far better safety record.

Seat belts hadn't even been thought of in the early days of laminated glass - the type that went yellow with age. I'm talking '20s or so. And hitting a toughened screen can result in a broken neck.

I'm not sure either way in these days of seatbelt and airbags. Laminated screens - being made of softer glass - stone chip badly and result in poor visibility at night and in rain when old. Toughened ones reduce visibility badly if they shatter.

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