Besides ruining the driving experience, potholes are also responsible for many accidents and costly repair bills.

This is why Jaguar Land Rover is developing a “Pothole Alert” system which the company says could help save motorists billions of pounds in punctures, vehicle damage and road accidents every year.

The automaker has fitted a Range Rover Evoque research vehicle with a technology that allows it to identify the location and severity of potholes and broken manhole covers and subsequently adjust the suspension in milliseconds.

Jaguar Land Rover researchers working on the technology say it will be possible to share this data with other cars via the cloud so all drivers will get a warning about dangerous potholes, allowing them to slow down and avoid the danger, which means the potential for punctures, wheel and vehicle damage as well as road accidents will be reduced. The system would also alert road authorities about the potholes.

“By monitoring the motion of the vehicle and changes in the height of the suspension, the car is able to continuously adjust suspension characteristics, giving passengers a more comfortable ride over uneven and damaged road surfaces,” said Dr Mike Bell, Global Connected Car Director, Jaguar Land Rover.

The next stage of the project is to install new road surface sensing technology in the Range Rover Evoque research vehicle, including an advanced forward-facing stereo digital camera. “We are also researching how we could improve the measurement and accuracy of pothole detection by scanning the road ahead, so the car could predict how severe they are before the vehicle gets near them,” Bell added.

It gets even more interesting: in the future, the company may develop systems that could automatically guide a car around potholes without the car leaving its lane and causing a danger to other drivers.

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