Road friction is a critical factor for road users’ safety. Although various methods exist to measure road friction, these do not enable road managers to assess how continuously evolving environmental and traffic conditions affect road surface properties and the ability of drivers to stop their vehicle safely. In order to overcome the limitations of standard methods, NIRA Dynamics has developed algorithms to estimate friction based on vehicle telematics data, which is put to trial. By replicating a number of common driving and emergency braking situations at a local test track, data were collected using a station wagon type of car. A combination of hypothesis testing, clustering analysis and feature importance algorithms has enabled the use of NIRA’s data to differentiate between pavement materials and conditions, as characterised by different friction properties. Results show great potential for vehicle telematics technology to revolutionise the world of road condition monitoring, to better understand tyre-pavement interaction and levels of road friction required to keep drivers of modern vehicles safe. This will help road managers optimise their asset management and maintenance strategies, to keep their networks safe and reliable all year round, based on near real-time information.