J. Forens Sci. Soc.

(1972), 12, 559

Forensic Tyre Examinations - An Analysis

P. D. B. CLARKE
Home Counties Forensic Science Laboratory, Aldermaston, Reading, Berkshire, England

T h e results o f the examination of every &re case received at the Home Counties Forensic
Science Laboratory, Aldermaston, Berkshire, i n the 2 9 y e a r period January 1969June 1 9 7 1 arepresented.
T h e proportion of tyres which had in fact failed before the accident was found to be
quite low.
T h e various causes of &re failure are discussed, and the relative failure rate of dzfferent
tyre types is reviewed.
Reference is made to the accident rate in the area served by the laboratory and to the
proportion of these caused by &refailure.
Introduction
Over the last few years Forensic Science Laboratories have been called upon
to examine an increasing number of tyre cases, usually submitted as a result of
road traffic accidents. Several courses especially for forensic scientists in the
United Kingdom have been run by the Dunlop Company on behalf of the Tyre
Manufacturers Conference and a considerable body of experience has been
built up. This paper examines the results of the examination of every tyre case
submitted to the Home Counties Forensic Science Laboratory, in the 2i-year
period from January 1969 to June 1971 inclusive.
I n each case the tyre was examined in a consistent and predetermined way,
largely following the principles laid down by Morgan and Hall (1965), and
Grogan ( 1969).
A total number of 280 tyres were submitted by the Police during this period
and Table 1 indicates their vehicle sources.
TABLE 1
TYPES OF VEHICLES
261
Cars
Lorries
10
5
Motor cycles
Vans
3
Coach
1

The very small proportion of tyres submitted from lorries is of some interest.
I t is not clear whether this is a true reflection of the relative tyre failure rate on
this type of vehicle, or whether the physical difficulty of removal and transfer
of these items to the laboratory discourages their submission. A study of tyre
failures on the M1 motorway in 1963 (Starks, 1966) showed that 47% of the
tyre failures were from commercial vehicles. Personal contact with Police
Officers in the area covered by the Home Counties Laboratory (Bedfordshire
and Luton, Hampshire and Thames Valley Constabularies) suggests that
most cases, including commercial vehicle tyres, in which there is a suspicion
of tyre failure prior to the accident are submitted to the laboratory.
Of the 280 tyres that were submitted, 263 were found to be deflated after an
accident, and in these cases the Police required assistance in deciding whether
the tyres deflated before, or as a result of the accident. Of the remaining 17
tyres, four were not subsequently examined, three were a t their normal pressure,
one had towing damage sufficiently severe to preclude any further examination,
five were submitted for an opinion as to their condition vis-li-vis the Construction
and Use Regulations, 1969, (a statute which prescribes certain conditions of tyre
wear and damage in the U.K.), and in one case it was concluded that the tyre

had deliberately been deflated by someone after the accident. Two cases had
accident damage not leading to deflation, and one was a remould tyre that
had partially failed but which had not deflated.
TABLE 2
TYPE O F DEFLATION
Deflated before accident
Deflated as result of accident
Cause not discerned

Class 1
Class 2
Class 3

48
208
7

18%
79%
3%

Table 2 summarizes the results of the examination of the 263 deflated tyres.
I t should be pointed out that in three of these cases, experts for the defence
disagreed with the laboratory report, in that they concluded that each of the
three tyres had deflated prior to, rather than as a result of, the accident.
Thus it can be seen that in rather less than one in five cases, the tyre was
found to have deflated prior to the accident, whereas in the majority of cases
submitted there is some allegation or suspicion of tyre failure causing the
accident.
The various types of Class 1 failure (those which have failed prior to the
accident) are shown in Table 3.
TABLE 3
CLASS 1 DEFLATIONS
TYPE
Number
Puncture
20
Blow-out
8
6
Faulty valve
Repair failure
6
4
Serious underinflation/overloading
Fitting damage
2
Hole in tube seam
1
Manufacturing fault
1

42
16
12
12
8
4

2
2

I t will be noted that several of these failures are of serious underinflation

rather than complete deflation. Often of course the latter will follow the former,
as a result of subsequent damage sustained during the accident.

Class 1 Failures
Class 1 failures are of most interest to the tyre examiner and will be discussed
in some detail. As a background to this discussion, Table 4 indicates the
proportions of tubed and tubeless, and new and remould tyres found in various
TABLE 4

% of Class 1 and 2 failures

(1)

Original tread
Tubeless
Tubed
66
19
17
20

Remould
Tubeless
Tubed
11
4
6
3
5

(1) This study (256 failures).

(2) Quoted in Road Research Laboratory Report No.
LR 258.
(3) M1 motorway 1963. See Starks (1966).

surveys. Of the twenty punctures, nineteen had affected tubeless tyres, serving as
a timely reminder that this type of tyre is not immune from such mishaps,
although it is not clear why the proportion (95%) is so high since the proportion
of tubeless tyres showing Class 1 failures as a whole is about 71 %. Thirteen out
of the 20 punctures (65%) were on rear tyres, probably confirming the view
that rear tyres are more prone to such failures because of objects "flipped up"
by the front tyres. I n nearly all these cases small nails were found to be the
puncturing object.

Seven out of the eight tyres which had "blown-out" were of the tubed type.
The initial cause of this type of failure was usually thought to be some previous
damage sustained by the tyre, for example during kerbing, or possibly a previous
accident, although it must be admitted that this type of tyre failure is difficult
to explain. X-ray examination was found extremely valuable in two of these
cases and this technique would have been used more often if the facility had
been near a t hand (Fig. 1).
An unusual type of blow-out was encountered in a steel-braced radial tyre
from an Italian sports car involved in a fatal accident. Normal laboratory
examination failed to reveal the cause of the break-up of the tread bracer which
preceded the blow-out. X-ray examination showed that for part of the width,
and around the whole circumference of the steel bracer the upper layer of steel
cords were fractured (Fig. 1). This was eventually ascribed to the tyre having
been run in a persistently overinflated condition producing excessive stretching
of the steel bracing cords. Since this would seem to be a rare type of failure it
follows that the overinflation must have been fairly severe.
All six cases involving a faulty (i.e., leaking) valve were from tubeless tyres,
usually having some dirt or other foreign matter adhering to the valve seat.
Possibly the reason for the fact that these were all tubeless valves is that the
valve is often not renewed when a tubeless tyre is replaced, whereas tubes are
usually replaced when the corresponding tyres are replaced.
The other types of Class 1 failure which deserve comment is repair failure,
mostly involving rubber plugs in tubeless tyres. A common feature in these
cases is the finding of a repair plug loose inside the tyre, together with a circular
"
precession" mark (Fig. 2) around the hole on the inside of the tyre, made by
the rotating plug.
I t may be significant that in four out of five of such failures the vehicle was
travelling on a motorway, where tyre stresses are generally higher than on
ordinary roads. All these failures resulted in serious injury or death, in one case
5 deaths.
TABLE 5
PERCENTAGES OF TYRES OF VARIOUS TYPES
(Numbers in Brackets)
Class I
Class 2
Failures
Failures
Survey
15 (32)
8 (210)
12 (6)
Remould
Original Tread
88 (42)
85 (176)
92 (2290)
Radial
Cross Ply

31 (15)
69 (33)

39 (81)
61 (127)

45 (1114)
55 (1386)

Tubed
Tubeless

33 (16)
67 (32)

22 (45)
78 (163)

16 (408)
84 (2092)

Table 5 indicates the percentages and numbers of the various types of tyres
encountered in this study, and found in a tyre population survey of 2500 tyres,
carried out on two car parks, in Aldermaston and Reading. These results have
been analysed by the Chi-squared test in various ways.
First, to see if there was any bias in the sample of tyres sent to the laboratory
for examination, the frequencies of the various types were compared in the Class
2 group with the population group. The following values of Chi-squared were
obtained (all values are with 1 degree of freedom) : (i) remould 15.6; (ii) radial
ply 3-1; (iii) tubed 5-5. This indicates that the sample sent to the laboratory is
strongly biased in favour of remould tyres, that is many more remould tyres were
sent than might be expected from the proportion of remoulds fitted to cars as a
whole. These figures also suggest that the sample is biased in favour of radial
ply and tubed tyres, although in the case of radials, the proportion in the tyre
population during 1969-1971 was certainly lower than in 1972 when this
survey was carried out. There is no reason to suppose that the proportion of
remoulds or tubed tyres has changed very greatly in recent years.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

X-ray photograph of part of tread area of steel-braced radial tyre, showing

fractured cords.

Inside of @re showing point of plug failure, with circular "precession" mark.

562

The possibility of there being any significant difference between the tyres
which have suffered a pre-accident failure and other tyres was tested by comparing these Class 1 tyres, with tyres in Class 2. The following values of Chisquared were obtained: (i) remould 0.1 6; (ii) radial ply 1.39; (iii) tubed
tyres 3-0. These Class 1 tyres were also compared with the tyre population
survey figures and gave the following values for Chi-squared : (i) remould 1-09,
(ii) radial ply 4.1 ; (iii) tubed 9.6.
There is thus no evidence from these figures that remould tyres are more
likely to suffer failures which lead to accidents than original tread tyres.
Similarly there is no evidence that radial ply tyres are any more or less liable
to failure than cross-ply tyres.
The position on the vehicle of Class 1 failures in this study and in that of Farr
(1968) is given in Table 6, expressed as percentages.
TABLE 6
POSITION ON VEHICLE O F CLASS 1 TYRE FAILURES
(failure prior to accident)
This study
Farr
Front nearside
10
23
Front offside
31
18
34
Rear nearside
31
Rear offside
28
25

There are some real differences in these two sets of data, the reasons for which
are not clear. Although Farr's data comes from a bigger sample (630 incidents),
it is not clear how many of the "incidents" quoted in that work were in fact
accidents.
I t is sometimes said that the presence of unseated beads is indicative of
deflated running. Only 60% of the Class 1 tyres examined at this laboratory
in this 24;year period had one or both beads unseated, whereas 76% of the
Class 1 failures had this feature. This suggests that there is little significance in
this respect in the seating or otherwise of the beads.
Grogan (1972) has published some data showing the course followed by
vehicles which have suffered a sudden tyre deflation. Figure 3 illustrates the
course followed by all the vehicles from this study where this is accurately
known. T h e patterns are broadly similar to those of Grogan except that in the
case of rear offside deflations there is an apparent higher tendency to veer
to the offside in the vehicle in this study. The other difference in these two studies
is that front wheel drive cars formed 53% of Grogan's sample, whereas they
only formed 22% of the present sample. This latter figure agrees well with the
figure of 20.4% of such cars found in a survey of 5000 cars counted in the West
Midlands area (unpublished survey by the West Midlands Forensic Science
Laboratory).

Class 2 Failures
Tyres which deflated as a result of the accident form the bulk of the numbers
submitted. The causes of deflation can be grouped into three types, high pressure
dislodgment (HPD), concussion splits and cuts, and rim damage. Thc number
of each type is given in Table 7.
TABLE 7
CLASS 2 TYRE FAILURES
(deflation resulting from accident)

TYPE
High Pressure Dislodgement
Concussions splits and cuts
Rim damage
Total

Number of tyres
40
129
99
268

Rear nearside

Rear

Front o f f s ~ d e

Front nearside

Fig. 3.

offside

Course of vehicles which have suffered a tyre deflation.

O=collision other vehicle

X =collision fixed object

U

0 =roll-over

The total is greater than the total number of tyres in Class 2 (208) because
some tyres have suffered from more than one type of failure. For example,
it is quite likely that during an impact a tyre will be split by the same blow which
damages the wheel. The cause of deflation has been ascribed to the feature or
features which appear to form the major part of the damage.
Only 20% of the Class 2 failures on front wheels had deflated primarily due
to a high pressure dislodgment, whereas 45% of rear tyre deflations in this Class
were due to this cause. I t is possible that this is not a meaningful difference,
in that the signs of high pressure dislodgment are masked in many front tyres
by other damage, but it is also true that in many accidents the rear of the car
does undergo fairly violent sideways movement, a condition liable to lead to
high pressure dislodgment.
A similar pattern of distribution was found by Kilhberg and Stern (1968),
who studied the condition of tyres from 378 vehicles involved in accidents in
N. Dakota. They report that rather more tyres were found "off-rim" on the
rear wheels than the front wheels.
I n 45% of the cases of dislodgment, there were none of the signs usually
associated with this sort of deflation (i.e., rubber marks on the bead seats or
material, e.g., soil, trapped under the beads).
One of the few cases in which the rear offside tyre suffered splits and wheel
damage was the result of the car concerned becoming airborne during the accident and landing on top of another vehicle travelling in the opposite direction.

Class 3 Failures
I n seven cases, no definite conclusions could be reached as to the cause of the
deflation; these tyres usually had some small cut or split in the casing or tube.
Conclusions
There is little published information on the proportion of accidents caused by
tyre failure, but this study does suggest that it is very low. I n the 2+-year
period covered by this survey, there were 44,616 injury accidents known to
the Police in the area served by this laboratory. I n the same period 48 of the
tyres submitted to the laboratory were found to have deflated prior to, and were
probably the cause of, the accident. Assuming that all of these 48 cases were
injury accidents, this gives a figure of about 1 accident in a 1000 as having been
caused by tyre failure. This assumption is not strictly true, since a small but
indeterminate number were not injury accidents, but there is no reason to
suppose that. the
tyre-induced accident rate is any different in non-injury than
in injury accidents.
Although it is possible that not every tyre which had failed prior to an
accident in this area was submitted to the laboratory, there seems little doubt
that most of such tyres were sent for examination, and therefore the figure of
1 in 1000 can be regarded as reasonably accurate.
Grogan (1972) states that it is believed that 1 in 150 accidents are caused by
tyre failure, but he gives no indication of the basis of this belief. Kilhberg and
Stern (1968) found that none of the 378 accidents they studied was caused by
tyre failure, and conclude that, with a 95% confidence limit, the proportion of
pre-accident tyre failures is no more than 0.8%.
There is little doubt that the tyre examiners in the various Forensic Science
Laboratories in this country are in an excellent position to assess the relative
failure rates in relation to the total number of accidents. The great majority
of tyres which have failed and caused an accident will be examined at one of the
laboratories. Although the conclusions drawn in this study are based on rather
limited data, they provide a basis upon which a rather bigger and more meaningful sample may be planned. There is clearly a need here for an on-going data
gathering system on a nation-wide basis. Such a system would very quickly
accumulate sufficient data on which to draw really sound conclusions about
the role of the tyre in traffic accidents.

Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank his colleagues for their assistance, particularly
Mr. N. Dunnett, Dr. D. N. Dolan and Mr. D. L. Price, and the Director Mr.
P. G. W. Cobb for permission to publish the paper. He also gratefully acknowledges the willing help and advice of Mr. R. J. Grogan of the Dunlop Company,
and to the Directors of the company for permission to publish the X-ray
photographs in Figure 1.
References
Motor Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1969 Para. 83.
FARR,B. N., 1969, Road Research Laboratory Report LR 258.
GROGAN,
R. J., 1969J.Forens. Sci. Soc., 9, 13.
GROGAN,
R. J., 1972, J.Forens. Szi. Soc., 12,285.
MORGAN,
W. H. C., and HALL,R. A., 1965, J. Forens. Sci. Soc., 5, 192.
STARKS,
J. H. H., 1966, J.Inst. Auto. Assess., 17, 7.
KILHBERG,
J. K., and STERN,A., 1968, Conell Aeronautical Laboratory,
Buffalo, New York. Report No. VJ-1823-R20.