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“Safe Driving” is an essential world-wide automotive requirement. The demand for “Safe Driving” is particularly high in industrialized countries, but it is also growing in the fast-developing nations. However, the annual reduction of serious traffic injuries and fatalities is still too low and the target to halve the number of people killed in traffic in the European Union from 2001 to 2010 has not been met. Essential influences to close this gap include legislation, road traffic regulations and monitoring, technical improvement of vehicles including active and passive safety systems, the increase of the equipment rate for safety functions and the re-design of traffic infrastructure for safety reasons. During the last years several countries in Europe started to consider these aspects combined in an integrated and general traffic safety policy, i.e. “Vision Zero” in Sweden.

The release of ISO 26262 is only about three months after the 2011 World Congress. However, there are still some contentious aspects that can introduce challenges or cause a disproportionate effort. In this paper, we will show how to avoid these problems. ISO 26262 provides a detailed method for classifying the Automotive Safely Integrity Level (ASIL) of in-vehicle electronic systems. However, the ASIL value for a specific function/product can vary significantly across the industry. Applying a lower level than the industry norm can cause substantial liability problems. Applying a higher level can initiate an “arms race” with competitors. This is particularly true if there are no vehicle-related reasons for choosing the higher level or if it doesn't make the product any safer. To encourage international harmonization, this paper will define ASIL classifications for the main automotive components. Most functions/products are currently being developed using parts of existing products.

With its origin in the process industry, the IEC 61508 „Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems” is not fully applicable in the automotive industry, forcing the automotive industry to work on an automotive specific adaptation (ISO 26262 “Functional Safety – Road Vehicles”). This ISO 26262 describes an ideal development process that starts from scratch. In reality development activities are often split locally and in time. This can only be handled with a world wide standard as a basis of a common approach, wide enough to give enough freedom to adapt to diverse boundary conditions, but tight enough to hinder local interpretations to be that far, that a complete safety case becomes impossible. Therefore a strict world-wide standard which allows compatible interpretations is mandatory.