An attempt to assess the relevance of textile fibres recovered from car seats

To evaluate the occurrence of background and crime-related fibre groups on car seats under controlled conditions, the usage of 22 selected car seats was recorded over a onemonth period before fibre transfer experiments were performed using a known donor garment to simulate the crime-related contact. The transferred fibres represented only a small percentage of the total number of fibres found on a seat. Very few background fibre groups contained a number of fibres comparable to the crime-related groups, and approximately half of them came from the users' garments worn during the previous month. In a real case the relevance of fibre evidence on a car seat could be dramatically increased if control tapings from a non-crimerelated area on the seat, and control samples from garments which had a recent and legitimate contact with the seat, were examined.