A glass breaker is a hand tool designed to break through a window glass in an emergency. It is a common safety device found in vehicles to aid in the emergency extrication of occupants from a vehicle, as well as in some buildings.
Most glass breakers are standalone devices containing a sharp pointed metal tip for glass-breaking tempered glass, and many also feature a sharp shielded knife for slicing through seatbelts. [1] [2] There are also many examples of glass breakers being built into other tools, such as flashlights or multitools. [3]
One variation found in glass breakers is the material from which the metal tip is made. Although all glass breakers are made of strong materials, some glass breakers make breaking glass easier than others, depending on the hardness of the metal that the tip is made of. It is often believed that tips made of harder metals makes breaking the glass easier. Some sources have found that tungsten carbide tips make breaking glass less difficult. [4] However, laminated glass cannot be broken by any glass breakers on the market (but can be broken by other sharp tools as a chisel and hammer) Glass breakers are only effective on tempered windows. [5]
Glass breakers comes in two main styles: hammer and spring-loaded.
Glass breakers can also be distinguished into categories based on size, and whether they are intended to remain stationary in the vehicle or everyday carry by a person. Compared to emergency hammers such as those used in buses, glass breakers for personal use are generally smaller in size. They are often incorporated into other items such as flashlights and multi-tools, and there are many variations of glass breakers on the market.
An emergency hammer is a type of glass breaker shaped like a hammer. Emergency hammers are also known under various names, such as bus mallets, dotty hammers, safety mallets, and bus hammers. Many are attached to a cable or an alarm device to deter theft or vandalism.
It is a simple tool with a plastic handle and a steel tip. Its primary use is for breaking through vehicle windows and vertical glazing, which are often tempered, in the event of a crash which prevents exit through the doors. They are commonly found on public transport, in particular trains and buses and buildings worldwide (except North America including Canada and the United States). There can also be a cutting tool at the other end of the hammer. This is used for cutting through seatbelts in the event that they are inhibiting a passenger's exit.
Emergency hammers can be purchased by consumers in store for their vehicles, homes, hotels etc. to provide a means of escape should the doors/windows become unusable, such as in a collision, if the vehicle falls into water and is sinking [6] or there is a fire within a building.
A spring-loaded glass breaker takes away the need to swing a tool to break a window. To break the glass, the metal tip is held up against the window and a pin is pulled back and released to activate a spring, either automatically or manually. Spring-loaded glass breakers can be designed to be used underwater or to simply reduce the strength needed to shatter a window. When a car is submerged underwater, a hammer style glass breaker becomes significantly more difficult to use. While spring-loaded glass breakers can be convenient in some cases, most spring-loaded glass breakers are also limited to the amount of force the spring can deliver, [7] which could limit the user's ability to break tough glasses.
Larry Goodman's safety glass breaker has many similarities with a spring-loaded glass breaker, but instead of relying on a stored spring force, it depends on detonating a .22 blank cartridge with a spring loaded firing pin, driving the glass striker with the help of expanding gases rather than spring tension. This allegedly makes the device less susceptible to mechanical failure and applies a much greater force on the window surface, which in turn increases the likelihood of success in breaking the window. [7]
Seatbelt cutter, [8] ligature cutter, [9] Hoffman Design 911 Rescue Tool, [10] ligature knife, [11] with no open cutting surface may be incorporated into the device.
Invented in 1932 by Oscar Nisbett and Tobias Hockaday in the Chicago area. They were originally used by the notorious criminals Nisbett and Hockaday to steal from expensive vehicles until their arrest in 1941 in which the glass breaker was now being mass produced. [ citation needed ]
A patent for a glass breaker also was filed in 2001 as US patent 6,418,628.
A utility knife is any type of knife used for general manual work purposes. Such knives were originally fixed-blade knives with durable cutting edges suitable for rough work such as cutting cordage, cutting/scraping hides, butchering animals, cleaning fish scales, reshaping timber, and other tasks. Craft knives are small utility knives used as precision-oriented tools for finer, more delicate tasks such as carving and papercutting.
A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain, and brick.
In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type of switch is an electromechanical device consisting of one or more sets of movable electrical contacts connected to external circuits. When a pair of contacts is touching current can pass between them, while when the contacts are separated no current can flow.
A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, have been observed using tools to make other tools.
A crusher is a machine designed to reduce large rocks into smaller rocks, gravel, sand or rock dust.
Hydraulic rescue tools, also known as jaws of life, are used by emergency rescue personnel to assist in the extrication of victims involved in vehicle accidents, as well as other rescues in small spaces. These tools include cutters, spreaders, and rams. Such devices were first used in 1963 as a tool to free race car drivers from their vehicles after crash.
Vehicle extrication is the process of removing a patient from a vehicle who has been involved in a motor vehicle collision. Patients who have not already exited a crashed vehicle may be medically or physically trapped and may be pinned by wreckage or simply unable to exit a vehicle.
This is a glossary of firefighting equipment.
A survival kit is a package of basic tools and supplies prepared as an aid to survival in an emergency. Civil and military aircraft, lifeboats, and spacecraft are equipped with survival kits.
An air hammer, also known as an air chisel, is a pneumatic hand tool used to carve in stone, and to break or cut metal objects apart. It is designed to accept different tools depending on the required function.
A latch or catch is a type of mechanical fastener that joins two objects or surfaces while allowing for their regular separation. A latch typically engages another piece of hardware on the other mounting surface. Depending upon the type and design of the latch, this engaged bit of hardware may be known as a keeper or strike.
Survival knives are knives intended for survival purposes in a wilderness environment, often in an emergency when the user has lost most of their main equipment. Most military aviation units issue some kind of survival knife to their pilots in case their aircraft are shot down behind enemy lines and the crew needs tools to facilitate their survival, escape, and rescue. Survival knives can be used for trapping, skinning, wood cutting, wood carving, and other uses. Hunters, hikers, and outdoor sport enthusiasts use survival knives. Some survival knives are heavy-bladed and thick. Other survival knives are lightweight or fold in order to save weight and bulk as part of a larger survival kit. Their functions often include serving as a hunting knife. Features, such as hollow handles, that could be used as storage space for matches or similar small items, began gaining popularity in the 1980s. Custom or semi-custom makers such as Americans Gil Hibben, Jimmy Lile, Bo Randall, and Chris Reeve are often credited with inventing those features.
Came glasswork is the process of joining cut pieces of art glass through the use of came strips or foil into picturesque designs in a framework of soldered metal.
Knife making is the process of manufacturing a knife by any one or a combination of processes: stock removal, forging to shape, welded lamination or investment cast. Typical metals used come from the carbon steel, tool, or stainless steel families. Primitive knives have been made from bronze, copper, brass, iron, obsidian, and flint.
The Aircrew Survival Egress Knife or ASEK is a U.S. Army aircrew survival knife, designed and initially manufactured by the Ontario Knife Company, and entered service in 2003.
Tempered or toughened glass is a type of safety glass processed by controlled thermal or chemical treatments to increase its strength compared with normal glass. Tempering puts the outer surfaces into compression and the interior into tension. Such stresses cause the glass, when broken, to shatter into small granular chunks instead of splintering into jagged shards as ordinary annealed glass does. The granular chunks are less likely to cause injury.
A glass cutter is a tool used to make a shallow score in one surface of a piece of glass that is to be broken in two pieces, for example to fit a window. The scoring makes a split in the surface of the glass which encourages the glass to break along the score. This is not to be confused with the tools used to make cut glass objects.
A kitchen scraper is a kitchen implement made of metal, plastics, wood, rubber or silicone rubber. In practice, one type of scraper is often interchanged with another or with a spatula for some of the various uses.
An automatic center punch is a hand tool used to produce a dimple in a workpiece. It performs the same function as an ordinary center punch but without the need for a hammer. When pressed against the workpiece, it stores energy in a spring, eventually releasing it as an impulse that drives the punch, producing the dimple. The impulse provided to the point of the punch is quite repeatable, allowing for uniform impressions to be made.
The killing of Christian Glass occurred on June 11, 2022, in Clear Creek County, Colorado, near the town of Silver Plume, at approximately 12:30 am. Glass, aged 22, was driving alone in a vehicle in the evening of June 10 when the vehicle went off the road. Unable to get it back on the road, he called 911 for help at approximately 11:20 pm, June 10. When the police arrived, Glass may have had some form of mental distress, and refused to get out of the vehicle. When a police officer, with weapon drawn, asked him why not, he replied "Sir, I'm terrified."