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Comment by kgwxd | Hacker News Reader

In the grand scheme of things, what are the chances of getting in a car accident that leaves you alive, but traps you, and also causes life threatening injures or situations, but only at the level where if first responders can't reach and extract you in the average amount of time? And how many people are afraid enough of becoming submerged in water to even have the tools necessary to shatter a regular window? And even if they have the tools, what are the chances they'd be in reach and that you'd be able enough to reach them?

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Pretty high? You need only be unconcious to end up dying in a burning car because no one could extract you. Cars also deform in weird and chaotic ways in a real world accident, who knows what will be the final piece between you and safety. People sometimes exit via their rear windows because the front of the cabin is crushed and the glass there broke, but the doors and windshield frames were also crushed so you can't exit. Cars are pretty good at absorbing the impact so your body can tolerate it non-fatally, but you may still end up broken, trapped or simply unconcious.

Or reinforced windows might be the thing that prevent injury and death in the unpredictable scenario someone ends up in. I'm just saying, I don't think a strong case could be made for or against stronger windows. Statistics might give a good idea over a long enough timeline, but until more people are driving around with stronger windows, getting in accidents, how can we be sure?

Unless you're worried about getting shot at while you're in your car or a random brick flying through the windshield then you don't need this.

You should be concerned about debris from the truck in front of you flying through your windshield. Unfortunately, I don't think anything short of an armoured hull will stop that. The stronger glass is useless.

You can flip your question around and say what are the chances that you need stronger windows than the rest of the vehicles on the road?

I like your inversion method. For public consumers, we may need a stronger windshield glass for better protection, yes! For side windows though, probably not so much.

Dude, I grew up in Fresno. Duck yes I want bullet proof glass.

Doors unable to open + fire is all it takes.

So then you just need explosive bolts, right?

The door is either bent and can't physically separate from the opening or it's jammed against something like a tree/rock/road/another vehicle. Either way explosive bolts wont help you.

Breaking the window creates an instant smaller opening that's still big enough to get out of.

All the doors would need to be bent and can't physically separate or jammed against something to prevent EMS from pulling someone out. It's possible, but unlikely.

Not really that unlikely I'd say. From major pile ups where you'd want to get our PDQ, accidents where the doors are pinned, to more mundane mistakes:

https://www.tellwut.com/uploads/media/image/6511e1353649402o...

https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBTY...

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8kyf00w-pKY/Tnz1ztUQ8CI/AAAAAAAAA...

All it takes is some fire.

The second accident should be something EMS can pull someone out of from other doors. People would be stuck in the first and third, but those images don't show vehicles being incinerated.

It's possible, but not likely to have both a multi-car or large vehicle pileup that blocks all the doors and a fire.

I'd rather have as many options as possible in an emergency, however unlikely, especially since this has already been tried and tested by other luxury auto makers before.

It's likely that your spine will have sustained some damage in an accident that jammed your doors. That means you want level extraction, which requires removing both driver's side doors and the B pillar ("total sidewall removal"). Pulling a healthy person (or an injured person if they need to be removed from the car right now) out of a car is easy, doing it without further spine damage is a lot harder. Practising it is great fun, though :)

Open the pod bay door, HAL !

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