Taxi Driver Online

PH driver blames ‘faulty heater’ for shattered windscreen but car manufacturer insists vehicle is not responsible




York private hire driver Bose Thomas peers through his shattered rear window

A private hire driver from York is in a row with a car manufacturer because he said the rear windscreen of his new Toyota shattered unexpectedly while he was carrying a customer.

Bose Thomas, from Clifton Green, blames a faulty rear windscreen heater for the shattered glass, though Toyota said it had no record of similar complaints in the UK about its Prius range of cars.

Mr Thomas, 38, who drives for 659 Cars, said the incident happened at 4.20am on Friday after his passenger had stopped to use a cash machine at the Tesco store at Askham Bar.

He said: “There was a big bang and the glass smashed. The customer was frightened and wondered what was happening. I got out and looked around and the area was completely empty.”

Mr Bose bought the Prius in December and said since then the car had suffered a smashed wing mirror and also a shattered side window after a passenger closed the door.

“On Friday morning the temperature had come down 10C in York,” he said. “Then the car got foggy inside and I switched on the heating system then two or three minutes later it (the window) exploded.”

He said the car dealer where he bought the vehicle had blamed it on a stone chip and told him to claim for repairs through his insurance company, which he has now done, though he is still in dispute with Toyota.

A spokesman from Toyota’s head office said: “We were very sorry to learn of the damage sustained to Mr Thomas’s car.

“We do not believe that a manufacturing defect was the cause of the breakage to the rear window glass which means that Mr Thomas’s car will be repaired under the terms of his car insurance policy.

“Every effort has been made to minimise the inconvenience caused to Mr Thomas as a result of this incident and ensure the vehicle is repaired as quickly as possible.”

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/9864248 ... er_inside/

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

It looks like he is not a careful driver with all the other damage that he admits happened,
Now then at 4.20 AM it is getting light, so that the birds are on the scavenge, birds eat stones to help digest there food, bird fly's over deposits stone and smash, stone lands on road.

sounds more like a manufacturer desperate to blame anything but the car I suspect it was a rear window with a fault they don't all come off the production line perfect probably just down to bad luck he got a Friday window instead of a Monday one

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

I read somewhere that Friday afternoon cars are the worst, closely followed by monday morning cars. The best ones are the ones produced on Wednesday afternoon.

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Grandad,

I had that happen once on a Citroen C8, the Heated rear screen stuck on and over heated due to a faulty relay and the Damn thing went bang and exploded into a million bits as I was sitting in a car park, I thought Id been shot at...

But fair Do's Citroen replaced it under warranty.

I'd wager that some night bird with a cab grudge took aim at the car, or even sat in a window and sniped him with an air rifle, if there was no stone it's possible there may have been a pellet somewhere,

Other possibilities are it may well have shattered due to body flexing, I had a Vectra front screen do this, parked up on unlevel ground and came back to it a few hours later and a 7 inch crack had appeared, quite common on the Vectra C model, but then again I have a neighbour who has a high powered pellet gun who was firing it that day so it's possible he did it, sadly I can't prove it though,

Hot vs cold seems unlikely as this would only happen in a scenario of cold car with icy screen with the heater element working, but then again it's tested to withstand that anyway, I'll go with he got sniped tbh.


Interesting comment


Slow news day? or so i thought until i realised it's the same driver that forced my mate to pay for the wing mirror or he would have him arrested! all he did was shut the door and the wing mirror fell off,it looked like it had already been smashed but could'nt say either way.he phoned toyota and paid for it but was £75 cheaper than the driver had said when demanding to be paid directly! MOST IMPORTANTLY,the person who dealt with it was initially under the impression that the taxi driver was trying to claim the wing mirror under warranty so did'nt take payment there and then but called back later.


So now I'd say it got broke and he wants to blame someone else so he doesn't have to fork out, sounds like one of those scammy people with no morales tbh.

Seen this happen with boiling water on a frosty morning.........

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http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

Yeah but it was 10 degrees according to him, I think it got vandalised myself and he thinks he can get Toyota to cough for it, his record shows him to be a blame society freak.

Well, whether Toyota likes it or not these things have to happen to someone first! Or do Toyota just accept a fault is fault after it's happened at least twice? not very good for their image is it.