A vehicle leaving a scene often leaves its tyres behind — in the sense that the tread prints into mud, snow or dust, or paints a mark in blood or oil. Like footwear, tyre marks carry both class and individual detail.
What the track reveals
- Class characteristics — the tread pattern, width and, combined, the likely make and model of tyre, which can point to a type of vehicle. The distance between front and rear prints (the wheelbase) can further narrow the vehicle.
- Individual characteristics — wear, cuts, cracks and embedded stones unique to one tyre, which can link a mark to a specific tyre rather than just its model.
A track can also show direction of travel and whether the vehicle was braking or turning.
Recovery
Tyre marks are recovered much like footwear:
- 2D marks (on a hard surface) are photographed with a scale and lifted.
- 3D marks (in soil or snow) are photographed with oblique lighting, then cast.
Because a tyre is large, investigators capture as long a run of the track as possible — a single tyre's circumference is over two metres, so a long track shows more of its individual detail.
Its value
Even at the class level, tyre marks help reconstruct how a vehicle moved through a scene and narrow the search to a type of vehicle and tyre. With clear individual detail, a track compared to a suspect vehicle's tyres can carry real weight — evidence that's easy to overlook but often present.