A system for determining vibration characteristics of a motor vehicle having a sensing arrangement (8) adapted to sense vibrations of the vehicle or a vehicle part, and an electronic processing means (11) adapted to apply an algorithm (12) for evaluating signals from the sensing arrangement (8) and for determining vibration characteristics based on the evaluation. The algorithm (12) includes at least one support vector machine SVM (13a . . . 13g) adapted to output a probability that the current vibration characteristic belongs to a particular pre-set type of vibration characteristic.