OT-ish about air bags

OK, so I was listening to the radio in the car this morning, and there was a commercial for a local auto glass place. The statement made was "In a crash, your windshield can fail, rendering your air bags useless." And then the name of the glass place. I've been thinking about this all day, and it doesn't really make sense - I'm guessing the concept is that your windshield can shatter, then rip(?) your airbag?

I've never heard anything really like that, and it doesn't sound like something all that feasible, I guess. I also don't see how going to the auto glass place will help in that situation. maybe I'm missing something.

Thoughts?

A car with an airbag would have a windshield made of safety glass. Thus, it's not an issue.

The glass place is lying. Not enough that they could get in trouble tho. That's cuz, theoretically, someone could replace their windshield with some cheap plate glass that would shatter in large shards and rip the airbag. That's theoretically possible (altho it'd likely to be a home hack job).

Other than that totally unlikely scenario, they're lying. Cuz if you replace the factory glass, there's just as good a chance of the new install being botched as to cause a failure.

I'm guessing that the glass place is referring to an article I read awhile ago about the airbags being designed to use the windshield as a spring board so to speak - in that they put pressure on the windshield when deploying and it helps get them in position. The comments in the article were that a windshield not properly installed may not hold with the stress of the airbag deploying into it, and if the windshield adhesive didn't hold then the airbag may not position itself properly.

I don't know if there's any truth to this or not. Any reputable windshield place should be using the proper type of glass (tempered and annealed,) and the right adhesive as specified by the vehicle manufacturer. My understanding is that some vehicle manufacturers do vary by what type of adhesive they recommend, but I don't know how important it is... I'm not an expert on windshields by any means.

So that could be what they're referring to, but I'll tell you that I was skeptical when I read that article, so I'm not sure how much weight I'd give to the commercial... Why would a windshield fail - what does a windshield failing look like? That's what they didn't address in the commercial.. if they were saying use a certified glass place and they are one then I could understand, but just the general fear mongering of your windshield might fail rather bugs me.

Here is the link to a conversation awhile back on this subject.
http://car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=29418&highlight=airbag+detective
There is a link in my post about "The Airbag Detective" Dave Long. Lots of good info on why windshields need to be free of cracks, etc. as well as installed properly. He has done some major exposes of "good" glass companies and found that many do NOT follow the proper procedures for installing windshields, leaving people at risk. Things like not having the vehicle sit in a temp controlled area for 2-3 hours after installation as the instructions for some adhesives say.