Abstract: Pavement distress detection (PDD) plays a vital role in planning timely pavement maintenance that improves pavement service life. In order to promote the development of PDD technologies and find out the insufficiencies in PDD field, this paper reviews the technical development history and characteristics of various PDD technologies, which contributes to the current state of research on PDD. First, processes of PDD are briefly introduced. The PDD technologies based on radar ranging, 2D image, laser ranging and 3D structured light are illustrated. The newest 3D PDD technology based on interference fringe, which has better accuracy, is in progress. The principles and implementation processes of these methods are discussed. Finally, the shortcomings of these technologies in the field of PDD are concluded. Recommendations for future development are provided. The research results show that various PDD technologies have been continuously improved, developed, over the past decade, and have achieved a series of results. However, the measurements from existing PDD technologies can not be metrological traced to acquire the true dimensions of pavement distresses. The lack of metrological traceability technology in the PDD field needs to be further solved. In order to achieve more accurate and efficient PDD, the metrological traceability technology of PDD systems has become the future development direction in this field.