Michelin Invites Police into its House of Horrors

One of the lesser-known secrets of Michelin’s presence in Stoke-on-Trent is the company’s so-called Black Museum, which the company bills as “the home to the blackest collection of potentially deadly artefacts in the country.” If misused (which they regularly are) such dark items can cause considerable damage, which is why these examples are assembled together in an educational exhibition.

The Michelin Black Museum is an automotive anthology of the damage that can be caused to a vehicle’s tyres. There are around 200 examples in what is believed to be the most comprehensive compilation of the potentially devastating causes and effects of mistreated and broken tyres in the UK.

The Black Museum is part of Michelin’s training centre, which offers courses ranging from time management for company staff, to specialised programmes designed to teach Police Collision Investigators to assess how a tyre could have contributed to an accident. Although interesting to everyone, it is this later style of course where the Museum really comes into its own.

Richard Whitehurst, Commercial Training Manager at the Centre explains: “We have around 200 car, van, bus, truck and motorbike tyres and tyre sections in our collection. They’re not all ours, it’s not a Michelin only collection. The point is that they have been damaged by a very wide variety of causes from under-inflation to mounting curbs to being slashed and just about anything else you can think of.

“We teach Police forces how to inspect a tyre, determine its condition and then identify what set of circumstances led to that condition. These are very highly trained professionals looking for subtle witness marks, scrapes, wear patterns and so on, to establish how a tyre has been used and to conclude how differently it might have performed with different treatment. It’s an invaluable skill to have when trying to find out exactly how an incident occurred. The tyre tells a story and it never lies.”