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The current trend toward electronic system integration will soon bring active and passive safety systems together inside a single electronic control unit. The processing capability of microcontrollers and digital signal processors make it feasible to integrate many systems together on a single chip or fewer chips than before. Increased integration however, can increase the consequences and reactions to common mode failures. Failure mode management associated with this type of integration will be critical to provide the expected benefits while balancing the failure effects on these traditionally isolated systems. This paper examines tradeoffs that can occur when various active and passive safety systems are integrated together. Alternative designs are compared and the effects of various failure modes are analyzed.

Advances in electronic technology have enabled significant enhancements to automotive safety in the last two decades. In the 1990's, death and injury rates declined significantly thanks to airbag/restraint and anti-lock braking systems. Governments and insurance industries tend to focus/legislate performance for the most severe accident types, since these accidents cause a disproportionate number of deaths1. The industry tends to emphasize performance on the severe events without realizing the potential drawbacks, especially at the other end of the scale in low severity events. This uneven approach can lead to overly sensitive systems that respond inappropriately in low severity events. This paper outlines the need to avoid industry ratings and government requirements that emphasize performance only at one end of the scale.