There's no avoiding windshield chips and cracks if you spend time driving your car on busy roads. Highways and surface streets can produce plenty of debris waiting to fly up, creating unsightly and potentially dangerous chips on your windshield. Unfortunately, it's often hard to spot this damage, and it's all too easy to ignore seemingly minor problems once you see them.

If your windshield has been building up a healthy collection of chips and cracks, you might wonder if there's a complete replacement in your future. Fortunately, modern windshield repair techniques are much more advanced than those in the past, and it's often possible to perform repairs on windshields with multiple issues.

What Determines Repair Eligibility?

A quick search will reveal plenty of rules of thumb relating to windshield repair, but the reality is that it takes a professional to determine the severity of a windshield chip. If you aren't familiar with automotive glass, it can be hard to judge whether a chip is likely to spread or if it's too large or in the wrong place for repair.

However, there are a few general things that most automotive glass repair technicians will check. First, as in real estate, location matters. Repairs aren't optically perfect, so large chips directly in the driver's line of sight may be ineligible, even if repair is otherwise possible. Cracks near the edge of the windshield can also compromise its strength, so these may not be candidates for repair.

On the other hand, size is often less important. Modern techniques can repair relatively large chips and cracks, so the old standbys of comparing your chip to a quarter or another coin may not apply. While you probably can't fix a crack that stretches from one side of your windshield to another, technicians can repair most damage of a reasonable size.

Do Multiple Chips Affect Repair Eligibility?

As with other windshield repair issues, the most straightforward answer is that "it depends." Your windshield is an important structural element, so too many repairs can compromise its strength. However, unrepaired chips and cracks are far worse. Not only can this damage worsen over time, but it may reduce your car's overall safety in an accident.

The good news is that, in most cases, you can repair multiple chips as long as they're not too large, close together, or in areas that would otherwise make repairs impossible. If your windshield is starting to look like the surface of the moon, don't put off calling a glass technician because of concerns over replacement costs. In most cases, you can restore your glass with much more cost-effective repairs.

For more information, contact an automotive glass repair technician near you.