When my husband was attending graduate school he worked with a roofing crew for a few years. Now he notices roofs. We will be driving and out of the blue he will comment that the house we just passed needs a new roof or that a house has loose shingles. He never paid much attention to roofs before he was a roofer.
I never paid much attention to the windshields of vehicles until I began working for the Auto Glass Safety Council™ (AGSC). Now, if a car has a crack in the windshield I notice and many times cringe. Just recently, while taking a road trip, I noticed a van (filled with another family on a road trip) with a cracked windshield. The crack went across about three-quarters of the windshield. My first thought was “Don’t they know how dangerous that is?”
Then, I began thinking about how I never realized how important the windshield in my vehicle was until I heard it from AGSC. While I knew the windshield was a safety feature and protected the occupants of the vehicle from outside weather or objects, I didn’t know that it helped support the roof in the event of a rollover accident. I also didn’t know that it allowed the airbags to fully deploy or that if properly installed it should stay in place during an accident and keep the occupants in the vehicle.
This led me to thinking that if I didn’t know how important the windshield was, how many other people don’t know it either. How many times have I had my vehicle serviced and never noticed any signs or brochures indicating the importance of the windshield? I have seen signs regarding the importance of changing my oil regularly or checking my tire pressure and treads regularly but nothing about the safety and importance of an intact and properly installed windshield. Yes, there have been news reports about windshield safety and shows such as 20/20 have done segments on this issue, but I had never seen one of those broadcasts prior to working with AGSC.
So, if intact and properly installed windshields are that important, how do we get the word out? Maybe it goes back to the old Faberge organic shampoo commercial (yes, I know I am dating myself) that stated “I told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on …”
If I tell two friends, and you tell two friends or customers, and they tell two friends and so on and so on …