In the past, laminated glass was usually installed in the windshield, with side and rear windows being tempered only.
The difference is that tempered glass is per-stressed so that when it cracks, it shatters into many tiny and dull pieces. Laminated is the same thing, but with layers of plastic sandwiched with layers of tempered glass. Laminated glass will still shatter, but will be held together by the plastic layers.
In an emergency, small improvised, or purpose built tools meant to shatter tempered glass will be useless if the glass is laminated.
Because they have special ceramic tools. Windows will always be incredibly easy for thieves to break with no effort, but they’re incredibly hard for people without specialized burglary tools to break.
Specialized tools oversells it. A chipped sparkplug will work.
Yeah, they’re nothing fancy, but that’s their sole purpose. People aren’t carrying around spark plugs unless they’re car thieves.
I’ve seen videos of them shattering when a coffee mug or spark plug hits them. Sometimes it takes a couple tries.