Don't know if you guys have heard of this before because it was a surprise to me. I was driving back to work from a vendor last week. I was on the freeway travelling about 50 mph and all of sudden the driver's window 'explodes' leaving me with a lap full of glass. Thank you to whoever required tempered glass on the windows.

Anyway, everyone was fine but I still can't figure out what happened. I guess it could have been a rock tossed from another vehicle but I would think the angle of impact would be so slight it could not break the window. I guess the extreme would be a stray bullet (I was in the East LA area at the time).

Well, I got the window replaced today. I watched the whole process and it was pretty straight forward. Learned how to take the door panel apart too...

04 SE 4Runner 4WD

I'm glad nobody got hurt. =) Did you happen to take some pics of the glass r/r process?

ak

I had the passenger side window spontaneously blow out in my old 1991 Corolla. I looked for rock-throwing kids or gun-toting bad-asses, but after seeing neither chalked it up to thermal stress (it was hot out and I had the a/c on full blast). Luckily, my comprehensive coverage payed for it.

Gave me quite a start, though...

—Dan

glad to hear you're ok and that you or someone sitting behind you didn't get a face full of glass. my friend had an experiece where some kids were throwing bricks (yes..BRICKS) off an overpass on the highway. it hit his windsheild and nearly caused an accident.

happens more than you would expect. my buddies moon roof shattered when a rock dropped off a freeway. he doesn't know if it was on accident or someone threw it intentionally. luckily he had the sun shade part pulled shut otherwise he'd have a shower of glass.

glad you're ok..

That's a great idea. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me...

Maybe a bird? I have seen birds hit window panes before at full speed.

The only thing that could have caused something like that outside of the obvious high-speed stray pellet/rock/bullet/etc would be a freak resonant frequency accident.

There could have been a slight manufacturing defect with the glass which when agitated at a certain frequency became weaker and weaker until finally it failed. But this would really only be a plausible theory if that window was partially lowered at the time or if one of your other window(s) was open/lowered.

I have heard of people spontaneously combusting. No rhymn or reason, they just go up in a flame of fire. Or you have a worm hole forming in your Runner.

Sell it immediately and buy a Prius, it is your only solution.

Yet another good reason to have the windows tinted on any car... the tint typically holds shattered glass in place.

Sac State.... lol I love that episode of South Park.

Tempered glass and factory tinting should already do this well enough in most cases unless there was a lot of force involved, glass should rarely ever just fly randomly around inside of a car... instead it should shatter into a thousand pieces and stay in place over the window, or at worse, fall down toward the eart in large harmless chunks (nothing that could get in your eyes or whatever).