I was driving home last night and out of nowhere i hear POP. It scared the #$@! out of me! I look in my rear view mirror and I notice my rear windshield is blurry. Next, I hear crackling and I realized that my rear windshield shattered. I looked around to see if I was hurt and listened for wind noise and felt/heard nothing. I proceeded home and did an inspection. Luckily I had tint and it held everything in place.

I found no point of impact and nothing that may have caused my rear windshield to shatter. The next day I brought my car to Toyota and they too couldnt figure out what happened. I googled this and only 2 people have had this happen to them.

Anybody else had this happen? There were no cracks that Ive noticed previously and if there were, it wouldnt of caused that loud POP i heard.

 

Weather? Scorching hot day with the AC on full blast? Just guessing, however.

 

That would have been a real mess if the tint was not on there!!

Were you on the highway or a rural road? Fast, slow, bumpy or smooth roads?

Hmmm.... Maybe a piece of cosmic debris that detonated right above the glass!

 

?? isn't all glass coated to prevent splinters and shattering? it'd still break, but it's not like when you drop a light bulb

 

It was at night and around 70 degrees. The a/c was off and my driver side window was open a couple inches.

I was on the freeway and it was smooth, nothing out of the ordinary.

Im not sure if all the windows are but I know the front windshield is like this.

 

Nope.......

I have had some experience with that. If the rear or the sides go.... You will have little pieces of glass everywhere. If it happens in a door it is really hard to get rid of it all. You will be finding pieces of glass years after the incident.

 

Front windshields are laminated. Side and rear windows are tempered, but are not laminated. When tempered glass breaks, it makes thousands of tiny pieces -- there are no large pieces with sharp edges. Laminated windshields are made of two pieces of tempered glass, with a layer of plastic in between. If the glass gets shattered, the plastic holds the pieces so they don't fly into your face.

Laminated glass is hard to break. Hitting on the 'face' of the glass usually does not break it. But, hitting on an 'edge', usually does. I removed a shower door a few years ago. It was made of tempered glass, and I wanted to break it so it would fit in the trash barrel. I hit it on the face with a hammer, hard, several times, without succeeding in breaking it. After thinking about it, just a tap on the edge did the trick.

Perhaps your rear window was mounted with an edge too close to steel, or a small piece of hard debris got into the mastic around the edge. Normal vibration, with a hard object touching the edge of the tempered glass, could be enough to break it.

 

Had a similar incident on a rear 1/4 window of an old 'burb boat anchor I had. Turned out to be a kid using cars for pellet gun target practice. With the glass shattering, finding the point of impact for the pellet was nearly impossible.

 

yeah I vote gun shot, pellet gun, or a really constipated bird.