AGRSS Council Decides Not to Take on Repair

The Auto Glass Replacement Safety Standards Council (AGRSS) has decided not to pursue development of an ANSI standard for auto glass repairs, an idea that was suggested by Council participant and Independent Glass Association (IGA) chief executive officer Tim Smale at the council's September 9 meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz. The decision was made mostly due to the costliness and time involved in developing an ANSI standard, according to AGRSS chairperson Cindy Minon-Ketcherside, also the president of JC's Glass in Phoenix.

"The main thing that we had to look at is there's a lot of cost involved in getting a standard in place, so the reason we chose not to do it is cost," Minon-Ketcherside said.

The suggestion followed several months of debate between the IGA and the National Windshield Repair Association (NWRA) concerning the safety of windshield repair after the IGA released a study conducted by St. Louis-based Solutia Inc. claiming that moisture striking the PVB in a windshield can make it unsafe and therefore can make windshield repair of these breaks unsafe. However, the IGA later announced at an NWRA board meeting and in several articles that the study was meant to focus on the PVB issue, not windshield repair.

This isn't the first time the AGRSS Council has decided against pursuing repair. The issue was also voted down in the first year of the Council's existence.

"The general feeling is that AGRSS deals with replacement only and the Council did not wish to expand into repair at this time," Minon added.