Tires: Asymmetrical Tires, directional tires, rear tires

Question
I just had installed Kumho ECSTA ASX tires on my car. All of the tires have the marking OUTSIDE, and this marking "is" facing out. What is odd about the mounting though, is that both front and rear tires on the "drivers" side have the "v" shaped tread pattern facing "forward" toward the front of the car. The front and rear tires on the "passenger" side of the car have the "v" shaped tread pattern facing "rearward" toward the back of the car. In other words, the direction of the tread pattern is backwards from the other side of the car. This seems counter productive as far as grip and water dissapation goes. Do you think these are installed correctly ?

Answer
Dean,

Directional tires will have an arrow on the sidewall, and I suspect you looked for one and didn't find one.

What makes tires directional is that there are channels that move the water to the side - and typically this results in a "V" shaped pattern.  When reversed, the "V" pattern moves the water towards the center.  So the direction of rotation is important to get the effect - but the effect is relatively small compared to the overall wet traction properties of a similar non-directional tread pattern - on the order of 10%.

However, if the grooves don't properly line up, the "V" shaped pattern doesn't generate the effect so the performance is the same as a non-directional pattern.  That is what is going on here.