this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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Have just been researching this while looking for stocking stuffers. One alternative I've seen is to smash an old sparkplug, the pieces of ceramic are oddly effective at smashing out car windows.
The spark plug only works on tempered glass, on which these hammers also would also work great. The issue the article is pointing out is that many modern cars use laminated glass, not tempered, which is much harder brake, and on which the spark plug trick would porbably work even worse than one of these hammers.
Also, carrying around a tiny piece of a broken spark plug in your car, in manner where you can quickly and reliably access it in an emergency is probably difficult.
That was the case when these tools were effective. Has your research shown it still holds true? I would assume the same changes that made the glassbreakers ineffective would do the same for those ceramic shards.