Lexington is the latest place to be struck by the auto glass vandals.  According to police, no fewer than a dozen cars had their auto glass vandalized last week, all along a single drive.  The cars on Summerhill Drive suffered from broken windows and not windshields, further indicating the purely mischief-making nature of the prank.  People are suspecting that it is a single group that is responsible for the vandalism, considering that the incidents have all the indications of a series of vandalism caused by pranksters doing a malicious drive-by with a tool such as a pellet gun or a BB gun, two of the most favored instruments for vandals of car windows.

The auto glass vandalism are not new to this area, it seems.  At least one of the victims or owners of the vandalized cars, Nell Demaree, alleged that she had suffered a like vandalism before, after parking her car in the same location.  Residents of the area are troubled, fearing that the vandals shall continue to make the rounds of the location and make even more trouble for car owners.

Similar incidents have been breaking out all over the country and even abroad, although the vast majority of the auto glass break-ins this season have been ones suspected to be motivated by an intent to burgle.  The perpetrators do not always make off with something, of course, as some seem less discerning than others, but they do manage to steal something in most cases.  The usual items targeted are devices that are typically left in cars, such as GPS devices, sat nav units, and even mobile handsets forgotten by the owner in the seat of the car.  Other typical items that such car burglars look for would be packages from the mall, shopping bags, handbags, laptop bags, and similar items that may be left in any of the seats of the vehicle.  The usual recommendation in such cases is for car owners to simply take care not to leave anything tempting in their cars, and thus avoid presenting too much temptation to thieves.

The Lexington incidents, though, have not had any burglaries associated with them, which indicates pure vandalism at work.  This does not make it any less grave, of course: the owners of the cars still end up losing something, even if insurance does pay for the auto glass repair in most cases.  Still, the trouble of having to bring the car to the shop and wait for the broken window to be replaced is something to be considered.  Meanwhile, police are looking for clues and allege that although the incidents must have happened at any time from 1 to 5 in the morning, there should be some witnesses still.  Police urge any people with useful information to come forward and tell their story.

After nearly half a year of qualifying contests and division competitions, the auto glass company Safelite’s internal competition for identifying the best auto glass repair and replacement technicians in the company is coming to its national heat, with the country’s best technicians coming to New Orleans on the 8^th of February to duke it out amongst each other.  The technicians shall be meeting in the River City Ballroom of Mardi Gras World, and the event shall be running from 8:00hrs to 17:00hrs of that day.

This competition has been going on for a while now, with the first event having taken place last year, on the 10^th of September for the auto glass repair company’s Southern California division.  Two more competitions took place in that same month, one for the South Atlantic and one for the technicians of Ohio Valley, followed by four competitions in October for the Pacific Southwest, Northwest, Mid-South, and South, in order of occurrence.  November had only two division contests, with the Midwest and the Rockies heats being decided, and the one contest for December was the North Atlantic division heat.

Also called the Best of Belron Competition, this company event is going to see contestants being tested on various skills and competencies, being asked to perform a range of procedures that shall include windshield repair and windshield replacement in order to demonstrate their skill at their chosen profession.  The requirements are quite rigorous and evaluation is famously strict, with speed not even taking the front seat when it comes to the most important aspects of the procedure or repair required: quality, strict technical prowess, and even interaction with the consumer are all looked into first and foremost in the contest, in order to ascertain a truly outstanding, superior breed of auto glass repair technician.

The national heat that is going to be taking place this February is of particular import because it decides who gets to represent the country in the coming global heat of the competition.  There are going to be 32 countries participating in the event, so winning that round—the final one—would be a most prestigious honour indeed for any auto glass technician.  The need to ensure that the country is well-represented also factors in the tension surrounding the coming event, so both participants and judges are expected to be fairly amped up for the contest.

The auto glass repair technician who wins the national heat gets more than the chance to represent the country in Barcelona, Spain on the 22^nd-24^th of May for the global part of the contest: he is also going to be taking home a total of $10,000 in pocket money as an additional reward.

A Kern County Roads Department project that was started last October 3 has now become the cause of dozens of windshield repairs and replacements for locals, as well as acrimonious relations between residents of the area and the county officials.  The chip seal roadwork has apparently been performed quite poorly—at least, if the locals are to be the judge—and the result has been a great deal of aggravation for people traveling down the affected roads, which are the Frazier Mountain Park and Cuddy Valley Roads.

A former LA police officer who now resides in the area, Mike Jensen, has been vigilantly collecting and storing away evidence of the county’s sub par roadwork.  Jensen was motivated to do this after he himself was bitten by the road bug, which has actually required him to get work for either windshield repair or replacement at least three times.  He claims that traveling down the badly done road has incurred well over a grand in repair or replacement work for him, which is why he has been pushing for the county to do something about the situation.

Jensen is not alone: according to reports, well over 100 persons have suffered car damage due to the road, often due to the surface being so loose that other cars end up throwing aloft all manner of gravel and rocks at their vehicles, leading to dents on the body, broken side mirrors, shattered headlamps, and broken auto glass.  The people included in the current count have apparently already filed complaints and claims with the county, which has been dilatory in answering many of them.  Those it has answered, however, have apparently received refusals for the county to pay for their windshield repair or windshield replacement, with the reasons for the denial being vague.

Residents are understandably concerned, as they have little choice save to travel the road each day.  Some residents have even given accounts of having their windshield repaired, only to experience the same damage just a few weeks after, on the exact same stretch of roadway.  With the county continuously delaying answers even with the claims piling up, a lot of the locals are getting worked up—and have even discussed filing a class action suit, which would be the second time for Kern County to experience that, given that one already happened in the early 1980s, with remarkably similar circumstances: also for shabby roadwork and also for bits of gravel and other road detritus being thrown up by other cars as a result of poor road construction by the county and its workers.  Locals are hoping that the current situation shall be resolved as it was then, with the law siding with the people filing the suit, so that their windshield repair and windshield replacement work can be paid for the county.

The Boyd Group has finally completed its attainment of Master Collision Repair, a bodyworks and auto glass repair company in Florida.  The Boyd Group originally announced that it was in the process of adding Master Collision Repair to its assets in December 21 of last year, and the Group announced just this week that it had finished the entire acquisition process, immediately adding the new asset to its cash flow sources.  The announcement marks a significant expansion for Boyd’s auto repair services, especially given that it adds no fewer than 8 fresh facilities to its list of service centers in the United States.

The acquisition of the Florida-based auto glass repair and body repair works business was apparently completed for a price of anywhere between $11.5M and $12M.  The acting president as well as CEO of the Boyd Group, Brock Bulbuck, spoke of the new asset as an important one in that it was raising Boyd’s flag in the Florida area, where the company had yet to gain significant presence.  With the acquisition of MRC, that is now remedied.

The Boyd Group has been steady in its growth for the past few years, and has chosen, unlike another industry giant, Safelite AutoGlass, to focus specifically on collision repair instead of exclusively on auto glass repair.  The difference between the two specialisations is fairly clear to those in the trade: for reference, collision repair covers services for repairing or replacing materials or parts of the car that may have sustained damage one way or another, and this includes all parts of the car, from the windows to the tires; auto glass repair, on the other hand, focuses exclusively on damage that has been dealt to the glass parts of a vehicle, which typically means the windows and windshield but may also include, on occasion the headlamps, mirrors (side and rear), and the like.

Boyd started out in 1990 and has since grown to be one of the largest fleet operators in the US, and it runs several brands in both North America and Canada for collision repair.  Among these brands under the Group are Boyd Autobody and Glass, Gerber Collision & Glass, and Cars Collision Center.  Besides that, it now has the Master Collision Repair brand under its leadership.  As for Master Collision Repair, it was previously a family-owned company specializing in both auto glass repair and auto body repair.  The local business has had a history spanning at least four decades in the area, giving it a firm and established reputation with the residents.  It is also a BBB-accredited business, and one that started from a single family-run store in the Tampa Bay locale.

New Year’s Eve turned from a fun holiday to a harrowing night for a Utah family on the way to Beaver Mountain when an accident caused their car to slide into the chilly Logan River.  Apparently, Roger Andersen was driving with his two children, both under ten years of age, and a friend when he lost control of the car in a section of Highway 89 known for its high accident occurrence.  The car fell into the river and while the adults were able to get out of the car subsequently, the two children were apparently stuck inside, with the auto glass windows blocking their egress and their seatbelts strapping them where they were.

Fortunately for the family, the locals passing by the area were quick to help.  One particular trio, composed of a former policeman named Chris Willden, was instrumental to the rescue of the pair of trapped children.  Willden and his companions, his father as well as his son, immediately jumped to action upon seeing the state of the family and the vehicle, and freed the children from their cage by shattering the auto glass of the rear window with his pistol.

According to Willden, it was necessary to take that measure because there was no other way of accessing the two children inside the rapidly flooding car.  Although he and his father—along with the adults with whom the children were travelling—first attempted to open the car doors to extricate the trapped pair, they found that the doors were locked.  The problem was aggravated by the rising water in the car, which could well have caused hypothermia for the two children had they been permitted to stay longer where they were.  Thinking quickly, the former police officer aimed his pistol downward—to ensure that the bullet would eject without hurting the two persons in the car—and at the window of the vehicle, breaking the tempered auto glass and thus gaining access to the inside of the vehicle.

There Willden managed to cut loose the two children from their seatbelts and extracted them from the flooding vehicle.  The unfortunate family in the accident was taken to nearby hospitals soon after, and were pronounced to be in fair condition only recently.  While the two children actually started out in the ICU of the children’s hospital to which they were brought, their status was deemed to be vastly improved after medical care was given to them to stave off the possibility of shock or hypothermia.  Local authorities are already crediting the quick and efficient rescue of the family to the dozen people who helped, most especially to Chris Willden, for his quick actions in breaking the auto glass to free the pair from the vehicle.

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A man from the heart of Arizona, Michael Swedo, was recently sentenced to five years in jail for a long list of Arizona windshield repair and replacement fraud counts that saw him stealing over $80,000 from various insurance groups.  The sentence was given out only this year, marking a sobering opening for the new year for auto glass repair companies in the state as well as all over the country.

Auto glass repair fraud was noted to have gone down significantly last year compared to its figures in 2010, at least according to data released by the NICB or National Insurance Crime Bureau.  In 2010, the fraud figures for the industry ballooned to an unbelievable figure over 26,000 in total, which fortunately went down in 2011.  The Bureau’s data had been welcome news to people operating windshield repair and replacement business all over the country, along with insurers who stood to be in danger of paying out millions of dollars for fraudulent claims on repairs and replacements that never actually took place.  However, around the end of the old year and with the beginning of the new, a handful of auto glass fraud cases have just been making the rounds of the news media—admittedly relatively small ones, with hardly any going over the hundred-thousand-dollar mark, but still a good reminder to auto glass businesses and insurers that they should be careful with their business this year.

At least one auto glass repair brand, Safelite, has actually partnered with the NICB in an effort to bring down the occurrence of fraud in the country.  Early in December of last year, NICB announced a strategic partnership with Safelite Solutions as well as Alliance Claims Solutions to fight insurance fraud, specifically fraud in the auto glass repairs business. It was perhaps only logical: Safelite Solutions is the TPA (third party administrator) for well over 170 fleet and insurance groups, covering the country with its reach.  As a result, the NICB had already worked with the company before on fraud claims and cases, and reported Safelite Solutions to be a pleasant working partner.  With the NICB so often requesting the assistance of the company in tracking down data on claims, a more formal relation permitting the Bureau to access the information more easily was perhaps long overdue.

Auto glass repair industry members are hoping that, with the rise of more and more partnerships such as this, the occurrence of windshield repair fraud and auto glass fraud shall be going down this year.  Incidents like the one with Michael Swedo, where 16 insurance companies were stung by the man’s Arizona windshield repair fraud streak, are hoped to only become reminders now of past years’ troubles.

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Those who are interested in automobile craftsmanship and unique builds should probably take the trip to Provo, Utah some time soon.  A local auto glass repair shop owner, Jerry Woodward, is apparently going to be reopening the Museum of National Award Vehicles on the 23^rd of this month.  He is going to be showing off some of the cars that made him famous in the unique custom car market, including a model he calls the Thunder Rod II, which garnered the award for Most Beautiful Roadster in the Grand National Roadster Show in California in ’57.

Jerry Woodward has been building custom cars for some time now and in fact has a staggering number of craftsmanship awards under his belt: no fewer than 7 of them, to be precise.  Beyond that, he also happens to be in the Car Builders Hall of Fame.  Woodward’s family has long owned the facility that used to be (and shall be again) the Museum of National Award Vehicles, but it was shut for some time after the Woodwards’ main business, their auto glass repair and dealership, started taking off and needed space to expand.  Hence, the Woodwards decided to focus on their auto glass repair store first and close down the museum section temporarily.

Woodward said that he decided to reopen the museum for a few years again after hearing people say over and over that they wanted to see the vehicles he had built.  Many of these beautiful machines, like the Thunder Rod II, have won Jerry Woodward awards.  Besides the Thunder Rod II, another classic favourite is the Vortex that he put together in the early 1960s, which sports what was at the time a very unusual set of design features that permitted Woodward to snag the Grand National Car Show award at the time.

The Woodwards’ main business, Ace & Jerry Auto Glass, was named after Woodward and his father, who was the founder of the business.  The auto glass repair shop has had a long history in the area, having been opened at the start of the 1930s and gone on to maintain a strong presence in the local auto glass industry.  Boasting of fine skills and craftsmanship, the business’s auto glass installers claim at least 20 years of experience in their trade, assuring customers that they can depend on the shop for quality windshield repair, windshield replacement, or other services.  The company is also one of only three auto glass shops in the region recommended by the state’s Department of Transportation for those who might experience issues or require auto glass repair related to the I-15 project.

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One of the biggest auto glass repair companies in the country, Belron-owned Safelite AutoGlass, has just filed a suit against a Denver-based Auto Glass Repair Company named Safevue Auto Glass for a medley of offences that include deceptive trade practices, fraud, and misrepresentation.  According to Safelite, the biggest and most noteworthy beef they have with the other auto glass repair company, however, is that it has been making false claims of affiliation with the company—claims that, in some cases, Safelite representatives allege to have even stepped up to the level of the other company suggesting heavily that they are in fact Safelite.

According to the larger auto glass repair company’s complaint, they have come across multiple cases where consumers have reported Safevue’s phone marketing representatives to be misrepresenting the company with a view to making consumers believe that it is Safelite.  A particular example cited by Safelite is particularly intriguing: apparently, one consumer was so troubled by the marketing calls she had been receiving from Safevue’s representatives—who, she claimed, had been leading her to believe that they were from the Belron-owned company—that she ended up calling Safelite’s customer line.

The Safelite auto glass repair customer care representative took action and got in touch with Safevue, keeping the customer on the line so that they could discuss the matter and clarify the difference between the two companies.  However, the representative from Safevue allegedly told the customer, after being asked whether or not they worked with the Belron-owned company, that their company did indeed “work with them [Safelite]” and was in charge of handling majority of the auto glass insurance claims.  The Safevue representative also noted, however, that they were “a separate entity”.

The Safelite representative then demanded to know the grounds for these claims.  The other company’s representative then went on to tell them that the two companies used to be affiliated.  This is a claim, obviously, that Safelite denies.

One major problem for Safelite’s image, as far as companies are concerned, is the way that Safevue representatives operate: unlike Safelite, Safevue has telemarketers that make outbound calls.  Since this is something Safelite has generally avoided doing, company officials are understandably troubled, especially when it is their brand that gets criticism and complaints from consumers irritated by the marketing calls to their homes.

The nationwide auto glass repair company is also alleging trademark infringement, and says that the other company is attempting to enrich itself by riding on the wave of Safelite’s success as a windshield repair and replacement brand.  There has yet to be word from the other company as to how it shall react to the lawsuit and the allegations.

A man from Windsor, Ontario, has just had a very narrow escape from death—by a gap of only a few inches, to be precise.  Daniel Halliday, a Scotsman who has seen the horrors of war, had what he claimed to be the most horrific experience he had ever had recently, just as he was out on a casual drive.  The 86-year-old war veteran was driving along E.C. Row Expressway when a huge piece of metal slammed into his windshield, shattering it and sending glass everywhere and just barely missing his head.  Halliday ended up having to get a windshield replacement, but clearly, it could have been far worse.

The piece of metal responsible and the cause of his windshield replacement was a spring leaf over a metre in length and a good few inches wide.  This huge and heavy piece of metal is usually an element of the suspension system in cars, specifically those from earlier decades.  The spring leaf cannoned into Halliday’s vehicle so swiftly that he said he did not even have any time to react: so strong and fast was the projectile that it actually went straight through the octogenarian’s vehicle, exiting through the rear window, which also required an auto glass replacement job as a result.

Halliday said that he feels extremely lucky following the incident, even if he did have to fork out several hundred dollars just to cover the cost of his windshield replacement and car repairs.  Investigators say, upon inspection of his vehicle, that Halliday’s head must have been mere inches from the spring leaf when it went shooting through his car, meaning that a few more inches of difference would have decapitated him instead of leaving him paying for auto glass repairs and nursing a bit of a shock.

Police also noted that they could not determine the origins of the spring leaf yet, and guessed that, as is often the case with such objects, the item was either kicked aloft by another vehicle in front of Halliday’s or had been dropped by a vehicle before him.  Either way, another major point of relief for Halliday was that he had no passengers at the time.  Police say that any passengers would have been likely to suffer major or even fatal injuries based on what happened in the incident, and Halliday agreed with them.  He did note, however, that he felt a little bit of annoyance now that the event was over.  Although he still felt lucky to escape with this life, he also said that he now has to swallow the cost for the deductible when he gets his windshield replacement and auto glass repair work done.

A startling even stopped traffic on New York City’s Williamsburg Bridge on the 10^th, when a woman suddenly leapt from the bridge and onto the street below.  The woman, later identified as 34-year-old Jenna Marie Filippi from Queens, survived the fall and landed on an SUV parked on the section of Pitt Street just at the intersection with Delancey, and ended up smashing the windshield, requiring the owner of the vehicle to get a windshield replacement.

Authorities have yet to release more information on the victim aside from her name, age, and the fact that she is currently out of danger, according to the hospital to which she was taken.  The 34-year-old apparently drove eastbound on Williamsburg Bridge around 2:30 in the afternoon, then stopped her vehicle, which was a 2007-production Acura at the location where she jumped.  Witnesses recount seeing her getting out of the car very simply and just climbing over the bridge’s railing, then making the jump.  The vehicle on which she fell was a Honda Ridgeline, and one look at the pictures shows that a windshield replacement would indeed be necessary for the car’s owner, given that the force of the impact of Filippi’s body hitting the auto glass shattered it.  The SUV on which she landed happened to be registered to a local police detective.

The most remarkable fact of the incident, according to onlookers, was the sheer calm with which the woman did the deed.  According to the eyewitness accounts, she neither yelled nor seemed to rave prior to the jump.  Witnesses also noted the utter lack of hesitation when she leapt from the bridge, driving many to wonder what could have caused her to do such a thing.  While ideas about suicide are already in play, investigators are still waiting for more information from the woman herself, who was taken to the hospital shortly after the incident and said to have sustained several traumas.  Still, witnesses said that she was moving right after she landed on the SUV’s auto glass.

The incident halted all traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge, both lanes being stopped as onlookers and local police strove to help the woman to an ambulance and to ascertain exactly what had happened.  Williamsburg is not exactly a popular place for jumps of this type, although there has been previous incident before—one that, fortunately, did not require the concerned individual to go to a hospital or anyone to get a windshield replacement.  In that earlier incident, a man was intending to jump from the bridge to the street below, a drop of about 6-7 metres, when local authorities arrived on the scene and managed to persuade him not to make the jump.