{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/automotive-glass-installers-and-repairers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Automotive Glass Installers and Repairers",
    "soc_code": "49-3022",
    "category": "Trades",
    "us_employment": 20310,
    "median_annual_wage": 47630
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 61,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 17,
    "embodiment": 19,
    "liability_shield": 5,
    "trust_premium": 10,
    "judgment_accountability": 10
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Cutting cold-knife or wire through a bonded urethane bead without gouging the pinch weld, prepping and priming bare metal, then setting a 40-pound windshield to a millimeter of gap on a curved aperture is force-feedback work performed on a different vehicle geometry every job — the only pieces software has taken are NAGS part lookup and quote generation, which is why this sits at 17 rather than the low teens.",
    "embodiment": "Most of the day is mobile: kneeling on asphalt in a customer's driveway or a parking garage, working in wind, rain and heat that dictate urethane cure times, handling glass overhead, reaching into door cavities to reconnect regulators — 19 reflects that there is no fixed bay and no controlled temperature, not just that the work is physical.",
    "liability_shield": "No state licence gates windshield installation; AGSC/AGRSS certification and adhesive-manufacturer training are voluntary and typically held by the shop rather than the individual tech, so a botched retention bond becomes the employer's and insurer's problem — the 5 rather than 0 is for those documented safe-installation and ADAS recalibration certifications that some insurers and OEMs now require by name.",
    "trust_premium": "Work usually arrives assigned through an insurance network or a dispatch app, not by customer request, and most drivers never learn the tech's name — the 10 reflects that fleet accounts, dealership subcontracts and repeat commercial customers do get requested by name, and mobile techs who show up on time to someone's home build a referral base a body shop can't.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Real calls get made in the field — whether a chip has spread into the driver's critical viewing area and must become a replacement, whether a rusted pinch weld can be primed or has to go back to a body shop, whether ambient temperature allows a safe drive-away time — but adhesive manufacturers publish the cure tables and OEM procedures specify recalibration, which caps this at 10."
  },
  "rationale": "The core work — cutting out urethane-bonded windshields, prepping pinch welds, setting glass to tolerance in a driveway or parking lot, drilling and resin-filling rock chips — is manual work in uncontrolled settings that no deployed robot performs. What AI touches is the paperwork layer around it: insurance claim intake, VIN-to-part lookup, glass quoting, route scheduling, and the photo-based damage triage that decides repair vs. replace. The growing technical edge is ADAS camera recalibration after windshield replacement, which carries real documentation and liability weight and is where the skill premium is concentrating.",
  "outlook": "The physical job is safe for a decade; the money shifts from glass-swapping labor rates toward certified ADAS calibration, while claim routing and scheduling roles around the trade thin out.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State-level ADAS recalibration licensing or certification mandates — e.g. a state adopting rules requiring a certified technician to sign a recalibration verification document after any windshield replacement on an ADAS-equipped vehicle, with personal attestation. Auto Glass Safety Council's ANSI/AGSC ROLAGS standard and AGSC ADAS certification are the existing hooks; insurer contracts (Safelite/Belron network requirements) and OEM position statements (Honda, Toyota, Subaru) already demand documented static recalibration. If a state board or an insurer network makes named-technician sign-off a condition of payment, this rises materially.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 6
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "As photo-triage AI takes over the routine repair-vs-replace call, the human decision that remains is the contested one: corroded pinch weld, prior improper install, aftermarket glass that fails camera calibration, whether a recalibrated vehicle is safe to release. If crash litigation begins naming the installing technician on failed recalibration (already an emerging theory in auto glass negligence suits), ownership of that release decision becomes explicit.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift within a genuinely two-tier job: chip repair and commodity replacement are the routine tier under price and scheduling automation pressure; ADAS recalibration, OEM-glass diagnostics and rust/structural remediation are the judgment tier. If ADAS-equipped share of the fleet keeps climbing, the surviving day's work is disproportionately the tier no deployed system does.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Narrow route only: OEM dealer-network channels and luxury/EV owners paying for certified-shop calibration rather than a mobile commodity install. This is a premium for certification and OEM authorization, not for humanness as such — the buyer is not choosing a person over a machine.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Embodiment is already near ceiling at 19 and cannot meaningfully rise. Trust premium has no real route to high scores: buyers overwhelmingly follow insurer networks and price, and no one shops for a human windshield installer. The realistic ceiling here is roughly the low 70s, driven almost entirely by ADAS recalibration liability and certification, and that same edge is captured by a minority of technicians — the commodity chip-repair and mobile-install tier does not benefit."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 20190,
        "wage": 34170
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 19640,
        "wage": 34170
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 19410,
        "wage": 35790
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 18490,
        "wage": 37710
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 16230,
        "wage": 37920
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 17370,
        "wage": 43700
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 16890,
        "wage": 45320
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 18940,
        "wage": 47260
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 20310,
        "wage": 47630
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 0.6,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}