Bridegstone’s new CAIS tyre technology has been developed to relay road surface information to drivers in real time. CAIS stands for Contact Area Information Sensing, and is a piece of technology that allows your tyres to collect information about the road surface and condition, analyses this data and classifies it into one of seven road conditions before transmitting it to the driver via a digital dashboard display.

So why do we need this information and what do we do with it?

Well, being provided with real time road surface information allows us to adjust for potentially dangerous driving conditions that we may not be able to ascertain by feel and sight alone. We may choose to drive more carefully in snow or heavy rain, but often it’s impossible to tell the exact condition of the road beneath us, and conditions can change quickly in bad weather. Black ice, for example, is a serious and often fatal road surface condition during winter, but very difficult to look out for.

How does it work?

Sensors in the tread of the tyre detect vibrations and send this data to the analytical equipment. The categories it might be sorted into are: dry, semi-dry, wet, slush, fresh show, compact snow, ice. This info is then shown on an in-car monitor. The CAIS is powered by Bridgestone’s proprietary power generation equipment.