America’s road infrastructure covers a vast amount of the country but not all roads are buttery smooth. Many of them are in rough shape with Metro Detroit’s ribbons of pockmarked and deteriorated tarmac being a notable example of this. These bad roads not only create an uncomfortable commute, but also expensive headaches if they pop a tire or damage other components of your vehicle.

GM is out to change this reality with a proposed new system that not only helps bad drivers detect bad roads, but also avoid them.

Novel technology can potentially improve safety

The new technology was bundled into a recent patent application the company filed in 2023 (and later uncovered by GM Authority and it would use a suite of cameras and sensors on vehicles to monitor and collect data for numerous items including wheel travel, suspension displacement, and other data. The system would then use the collected information to allow the cameras to show road conditions in real time including pesky potholes, bumps, and pooling water.

The data would then be beamed up into the cloud where a Road Maintenance score would be created. If the score is poor enough to warrant attention, GM could potentially send the data to officials so they can remedy the bad section of road as quickly as possible. GM’s system would also provide alternate routes to drivers to avoid bad pavement and while the patent doesn’t detail how that would be done, we suspect it could either be through the infotainment system or via Super Cruise with the latter potentially bundling it into the pre-mapped sections of road it has on file.

An idea worth studying

GM’s idea is certainly an ambitious one but it would allow the company to have a unique selling point when it comes to technology with the system potentially saving the owners of equipped vehicles thousands in repair costs. That said, it would also require GM to invest considerably more money into some of the cloud-based technology and the advanced sensors needed to properly calculate the data.

GM for its part hasn’t received any formal patents for the technology as of yet, but if the new system does make its appearance in a production GM vehicle, we expect the company to first roll it out in Cadillac vehicles with the real-world data allowing the firm to learn and refine the system before it moves to other brands.