If you’ve ever driven into a pothole, you know that feeling sucks where you’re hoping your tire did not burst and that there is no long-term damage to your car. Sometimes potholes can appear out of nowhere especially if you’re unfamiliar with the roads and are driving a bit too fast, but Google wants to help you avoid them.
The company has recently filed a patent that will apparently take advantage of your car’s GPS to help create a database of potholes. This will be combined with motion sensors that will be able to tell when your car enters into a pothole, and when that happens, that particular location will be saved to a database.
In a way it works like how Waze crowdsources traffic data, except that in this case it’s for potholes. Ultimately the goal is to create a system that can guide drivers around potholes or inform them which roads are the smoothest. In fact if you might recall, carmaker Jaguar Land Rover recently came up with an anti pothole system of their own.
Will this patent from Google ever see the light of day? Considering the various advancements the company has made to Google Maps, like informing users if a destination is closing or upcoming railroad crossings, we suppose it is possible, but no one knows when exactly that will happen.