Tinted glass draws ire of police - But how justifiable?

The nation has been alerted by the police high command that vehicles with tinted glasses will not be allowed to ply the roads and owners must remove them.

Recently, the police mounted an operation on vehicles with tinted glasses, asking every vehicle with tint, whether from the factory or self made, to remove them.

The reasons assigned for their removal is that some criminals use vehicles with tinted glasses to commit crimes. But the reason is too gen¬eralistic. It is just by saying that vehi¬cles are causing a lot of road accidents so we must ban the use of all registered vehic1es on the road.

There are few people who use tint for criminal acts other than the road safety benefits to the users of tinted glasses in the event of a crash. The publics would have benefited if some form of education was done to highlight their usefulness or otherwise.

A lot of people think it is for the purpose of show-off or criminal activities. It is very unfortunate for people to think that way.

Tinted vehicle glasses are very useful for car users and the use by a few people for criminal activities should not be generalized to call for a ban on their use.

It may interest readers to note that tinted glasses provide protection, security and comfort in vehicles. Tinted glasses have a huge benefit in road safety in reducing bodily injuries by disallowing huge glass fragmentations - and their associated longsuffering even months after the crash had occurred.

Tinted glasses are vehicle glasses that, from the front, back and side of windscreens, are almost or all covered by bronze, charcoal, grey or stainless (mirror) quotes. Tint is made in three main ways, either by spray, rubber coat or a film. -
As a road safety expert, I will first talk about the protection tinted glasses provide. Whichever type of tintes glass protects occupants in a vehicle from sustaining serious glass injuries, should the vehicles involve in a crash. The tint holds the glass together and does" not allow easy fragmentation - to cause massive injuries to passengers.

This can easily be demonstrated.
In most heavy tints there is between four and five inches strip in the upper• part of the front windscreen and this is a huge protection for front vehicle occupants.

When vehicles are crashing occupants may be raised up and thrown to hit the front windscreen. If a glass is tinted the tint holds the glass together thereby reducing head injuries in case of fragmentation of the glass.

It has been proved that about 72 per cent of people in tinted glass crash are spared glass injuries. Airbags, seat belts and tinted glasses are all vehicle safety devices and not for show-off.

The security aspect of tinted glasses is to prevent people from seeing through the vehicle to attempt to or cause vehicle robbery. The stainless or mirror tint type is very useful in this direction.

With this type the outsider only sees him/her self when peeping through the vehicle windows and this is best fit' for the back sides windscreens. Who does' not leave properties in vehicles? Tinted glass is security for all.

The comfort provided by tinted glass is amazing. Tint could be 19 per cent – 32 per cent sun cut at the back side windscreens and 45 per cent – 35 per cent sun cut at the front windscreens, which is usually coated about four inches to five inches strip and also has about 81 per cent sun cut or better depending on the vehicle make, room space.

When we say 19 per cent sun cut, what it means is that the glass allows only 19 per cent of the sun rays, or heat or scorch into the vehicle. This means that about 81 per cent of the sun heat is prevented from entering the vehicle to cause discomfort to occupants. Therefore tinted glasses rather reduce heat in vehicles.

In fact, if you look at the usefulness of tinted glasses in preventing the scorching sun, then it is the tropical climate zones that greatly require the use of tinted glasses. This can easily be demonstrated by using two same vehicle types, one tint and the other not tinted.

Leave these two vehicles in the hot sun with all windows closed for say two to three hours. Take your room' thermometers with two researchers entering and closing the doors simultaneously for two minutes and check the temperature readings. Do this and you would understand.

We, road safety researchers and practitioners, should rather encourage the use of tinted glass in our vehicles to reduce road crash injuries in these times of high and unacceptable road crashes rather than general¬ising its criminal use to give it a bad name to destroy its good intent.