So if your windshield is hit and cracked by flying road gravel from a passing truck or car, who’s to blame? Who is legally responsible for replacing your windshield?
Let’s assume that your insurance is 500.00 deductable.
Probably nobody… Unless there was careless/reckless driving as a cause.
Swallow it and pay it out of your own pocket. As long there isn’t a “crack” (and yes, I noticed you said crack) but more of a “bubble” or “chip”, you may be able to just get it fixed for 20-40 bucks.
IANAL, but I had a friend who had her windshield cracked.
She was told by her insurance company that if the gravel was on the road the driver of the car who threw up the gravel was not responsible. It isn’t his fault if there is a rock on the road. If a truck hauling gravel has gravel flying off the back of the truck they are responsible for any damage.
I have first hand experience at this… bought my first NEW car in January and in February my window was hit by a stone on the highway.
My insurance company paid to have it repaired. The repair failed and the insurance company paid to have it replaced. If I remember correctly, there was a $100 deductable, that the window place covered.
Broken/cracked windows don’t count against regular insurance. The deductable was lower than regular claims and does not count against you in the future (sort of like you never made a claim).
Things may be different from various insurance companies… I’m with State Farm in Ontario…
…and from country-to-country I would add. AAA Michigan will pay for window repair, no questions, no penalties. If you wait too long and the crack grows beyond repairable, you need to pay the deductible for the windshield replacement. Luckily a 2000-Ranger only cost $200 complete, and they came to me 
– too low for the insurance claim, in fact.
One caveat to the you-can’t-help-rocks-on-the-road thing – if the truck has broken or missing mudflaps (which are a daily federally-required check I’m told), you can probably recover directly from the trucking company, if you get all of the necessary information.
Here in the UK there is a cheap and nasty way of repairing roads which can produce a lot of loose gravel. The technique consists of spraying wet tar on the road and then covering it with a layer of gravel.Then a 10mph limit is imposed until the passing traffic beds down this gravel. This does not work all the time and then you get lots of flying stones and many broken windshields .In some cases motorists have been able to claim off the local authority who’s bad workmanship had caused the problems.
I just got a large “star” in my windshield from debris in the road kicked up by another car.
I put off dealing with it until a local yokel wrote me a fix-it ticket for the crack. The damage was too large to repair (10-12" radial cracks) so I needed a replacement windshield.
Insurance deductable was $500, like yours, but fortunately, for my Ford Escort, the replacement cost, with tax and labor, was $170. And they came to my office and replaced it right there in the parking lot.
Very painless. (Well, except for standing in line to pay the $20 ticket.)
Kee-ryst, I can’t believe I just wrote that comma-riddled disaster. 20 lashes with correction tape!