Hi Guys,

Need a bit of advice, if you see the attached pictures, my Ford Fiesta's rear screen cracked 2 nights ago.
https://imgur.com/AA5NXI0 

https://imgur.com/m7JjS31

The car is a 60 Reg, bought first hand. I parked the car near my house and went out for an hour in a different car and came back and noticed this. Our neighbourhood is very safe and is new so we never had any issues there. I asked my friends and colleagues who suggested that it could be a pebble slipping through the wheels of some car and hitting at the angle to crack it. However, if you look closely, there is that plastic sucker which you get with "baby on board" hangings which we got like 6 years ago. We removed the board but left the plastic sucker (do apologise if i'm using the wrong word here) in place for about 4 years now. This thing sits directly on top of the heated rear screen's heating element copper strip. And you can see it is burnt. My little one complained about burning small when she sat at the back 2 days earlier which we couldn't get the same smell in the front. Could this have caused the screen to crack. Just a note, I have used that rear screen heating just before then as the temperature was 4 degrees that evening.

Just trying to understand what would have happened? Any thoughts on this guys?

Thanks in advance.

 

Looks like it really went pop! Must have more or less exploded to shatter it like that. I would say that the wire hook contacted on 2 of the heating strips and shorted the whole thing out, that's where you got the burning and smell from, it generated enough heat to shatter the window. Remove the sucker, you'll probably make the hole bigger doing it, and contact your insurance Company, if windows are covered in your policy you can claim for a new one to be fitted.

Rear screens aren't laminated...prepare for a lot of mess if you do try and remove the sucker!

Likely to be ~£70 excess through insurance but you don't actually need to tell them directly.  If you book an Autoglass appointment they'll sort the insurance side for you.

In my experience Autoglass will not sort out the insurance, that is the owners responsibility as the policy holder. Do not attempt to remove any of the glass until your insurance Company has been informed, they may wish to send out an assessor but do remove the sucker, you are bound to get a certain amount of glass drop into the car, that's unavoidable. If the glass does fall into the car you may be able to claim for a valet to remove it, in the mean time you could cover the parcel shelf, back seats and floor area with a bed sheet to minimise a mess if the glass caves in and take another picture after you remove the sucker.

Thanks for all your replies guys. Yes, I informed Autoglass through my insurance company and they replaced it, had to pay 75£ excess along with 18£ for a new rear wiper. 

Here you can see just the sucker with glass shards: https://imgur.com/oUU8ra6

So we probably can rule out someone throwing a stone at the rear window. Its strange that it happened now as that sucker was left stuck to the window for the past 4 years and we did have strong winters and I did use the rear heating as much as the front one. 

did autoglass talk you into buying the wiper from them? I can not see how this glass breakage resulted in it needing a new wiper. 

Yes, they did saying if the wiper is cracked, it will scratch the glass. However, the wiper is old and needs replacing so I asked them to do it. 

But .. .the glass they fitted already has scratches on the sides! So now they will redo it again in a few day!!