Tire Guides

Tire Guides, Inc. was founded by Bennett Garfield in 1950. Bennett Garfield, a young entrepreneur working in tire sales, recognized the industry’s need for more detailed tire information. He left his sales position and started a publishing company. The first publication, Tire-Fax, was an instant success. Seeing then how the industry welcomed this 'collection' of tire information, Bennett pressed on and in 1957 he debuted his company’s namesake publication the Tire Guide. Now for the first time tire dealers had an accurate up-to-date collection of motor vehicle fitment information covering a 10 year period which included tire sizes, optional tire sizes and inflation and rim specifications for both domestic and foreign vehicles.

Over the years, Tire Guides, Inc. has always made a priority of addressing the informational needs of the tire industry. In 1966, they expanded their publications by introducing the Tread Design Guide and the Who Makes it and Where Tire Directory.

Today, Tire Guides, Inc. is well known as the Worldwide Tire Information Center. In keeping up with technology, much of our information is available in an electronic format.

Their mission is to provide the most complete and up-to-date technical tire information in a variety of easy to use formats to anyone who may need or desire such valuable information.

Tread Typer

Tread Typer is a discussion board on the SWGTREAD Forum. This board is designed to assist practitioners with make/model determinations of questioned footwear and tire impressions. This is similar resource to the Wanted Page, which is maintained by the ENFSI Expert Working Group Marks. Post an image(s) of a questioned footwear or tire impression in hopes that another practitioner will be able to identify the make/brand and model of the shoe or tire, which COULD be the source of the impression.

SWGTREAD is not responsible for the accuracy of the responses on Tread Typer. It is the responsibility of the practitioner posting to Tread Typer to verify the information/images included in the responses. It is recommended that you consult with the evidence contributor and remove case-related information in/from the images prior to posting on this board.

In order to access Tread Typer, you must be a registrered as a Practitioner on the SWGTREAD Forum. Go to http://forum.swgtread.org and register. Then, access the Tread Typer board under the Practitioners' Forum.

NON-PRACTITIONERS

Non-practitioners are those individuals who collect footwear and tire impression evidence or investigate crimes which involve this type of evidence. Non-practitioners have not completed a formal laboratory training program in the examination of this type of evidence and they don't conduct comparisons, issue laboratory reports or testify as footwear/tire experts in courts of law.

For non-practitioners who are ineligible to access Tread Typer, contact your local forensic services provider for assistance regarding requests for make/model determinations. If additional assistance is needed, e-mail the point of contact.

POINT OF CONTACT

Brian McVicker ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )

TreadMate

TreadMate is a reference collection containing details of over 8,500 vehicle tyres. It may be used as a stand alone system or with SICAR, the company’s shoe print and tyre mark evidence management system.

Each vehicle tyre record in TreadMate contains the tyre’s manufacturer, the manufacturer’s reference for that tyre, the date of its release on to the market, a pictorial image of the tyre and a set of pattern feature codes that facilitate search and match operations. Where different manufacturers have used the same tread, TreadMate records are linked to allow the operator to consider all the vehicle tyres that might have been responsible for a crime scene tyre mark.

To use the database, the pattern of the unidentified tyre mark is first assigned a set of codes. In this procedure, the operator identifies elemental pattern features within the tyre print, such as waves, lines, diamonds, zigzags, curves, blocks etc. These options are presented to the operator, pictorially with variations for the operator to select those that best match the features within the tyre mark. The codes assigned to these pattern features form the basis of the database search. Results of a search are presented in descending order of correlation for the operator to examine visually.

TreadMate is available on CD, updates are issued annually with information on new tyres.

Wanted Page

The Expert Working Group Marks (EWGM) is one of the forensic science working groups of the European Network of Forensic Science Institute (ENFSI). This working group covers examinations in a wide range of disciplines including toolmarks, shoeprints, tire marks, barefeet, lock and key examinations, manufacturing marks and other related topics.

The Working Group Marks maintains the Wanted page which is meant for fellow examiners' questions. Most of the questions deal with identifications of a brand name for the shoeprint found at the crime scene.