The system, called the Congestion Avoidance Dynamic Routing Engine – or Cadre – uses live information from all cars fitted with the same machine to identify where bottlenecks are building up nearby.

It can then give the driver the best alternative route to avoid it.

The university designers hope if large numbers of vehicles are fitted with the system, drivers will have access to an more accurate map of nearby traffic than has been possible until now.

In the future designers foresee the system being able to provide details such as exact acceleration or braking rates of all nearby vehicles to give a highly-detailed picture of congestion.

One of the system's developers, Dr David Brown, said Cadre is revolutionary. It relies on live information from nearby cars, not static traffic cameras like the current Traffic Master System.

'Using dynamic updating it observes exactly what cars five miles in front are doing,' he said. 'Obviously if there is only one other car on the road with the system, and it is stuck behind a tractor, then it is not going to be very accurate. But, with 10,000 cars fitted with Cadre it has the potential to provide incredible details of road positions.'

Cadre works by using information sent by GPS from every car fitted with the system to calculate approximate road conditions.