ROLAGS votes to limit crack repair to 6 inches

The Repair of Laminated Automotive Glass Standard's Standard Developing Committee voted to amend the standard "to limit length of crack to 6 inches from center of the damage." The motion passed with a two-thirds vote this week.

The next step will be to post the suggested revisions in the American National Standards Institute “Standard Actions” for comment in early December. The revisions will be available for review on GlassMagazine.com. The ROLAGS Comment Subcommittee, with the approval of the SDC, will review and answer comments. The ROLAGS committee will then meet at The National Auto Glass Conference: A Forum for Auto Glass Executives, Feb. 18-20, 2009, at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate in Orlando. At that meeting, the SDC will look at the unresolved comments and will reaffirm their votes.Once the comments are answered and the votes are reaffirmed, the change will be sent to ANSI as a permanent change to the standard. ANSI usually takestwo to fourweeks to approve the changes.

Annex BIn addition, the SDC made and adopted a motion to revise Annex B to read: “If a company’s policy is in all other respects compliant with this standard, but said company maintains a policy limiting the size of some or all repairable damages to dimensions that are less than those listed in section 6 or in section 7 DVPA [driver's primary viewing area], said company is compliant with this standard.” The committee also passed a motion to amend the standard by moving the revised Annex B into Section 6. These changes also will be included in the process described above before becoming a permanent change to the standard.

Long-crack repairA standard covering long-crack repair is also a possibility, said Peg Stroka, NGA manager of standards, in an interview. "The National Glass Association has committed to doing a standard on long crack repair [greater than 6 inches], if there is interest to do it," she said. The process to create such a standard, however, would not begin until ANSI approved the ROLAGS changes described above.