PRIORITY business intelligence

The new standard, ISO 26262, Road vehicles – Functional safety:

• Provides and supports an automotive safety lifecycle (management, development, production, operation, service, decommissioning)
• Outlines an automotive-specific risk-based approach (automotive safety integrity levels)
• Helps avoid unreasonable residual risk
• Can be used to validate and confirm safety levels
• Provides requirements for relations with suppliers.

Nicolas Becker, Project Leader of the group that developed the standard, explains, "Safety is one of the key issues of future automobile development, and it affects all technologies, whether mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic, and so on. With more and more electronic-based systems integrated into cars, the need increases to ensure that any potential failures are averted or mitigated, so as to avoid any harm. There is a need for safe system development processes, and for the ability to provide evidence that all system safety goals are satisfied. The new ISO 26262 helps the industry do just that."

ISO 26262 is the adaptation of IEC 61508, Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related system, to the specific requirements of passenger cars and light utility vehicles. ISO 26262 can be used for all activities applying to the lifecycle of safety-related systems involving electrical, electronic software, during the development, production, management and service processes.

The standard consists of several parts, published in 2011, as follows:

• Part 1: Vocabulary
• Part 2: Management of functional safety
• Part 3: Concept phase
• Part 4: Product development at the system level
• Part 5: Product development at the hardware level
• Part 6: Product development at the software level
• Part 7: Production and operation
• Part 8: Supporting processes
• Part 9: Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL)-oriented and safety-oriented analyses.

ISO 26262, Road vehicles – Functional safety, was developed by ISO/TC 22, Road vehicles, subcommittee SC 3, Electrical and electronic equipment. It is available from ISO national member institutes (see the complete list with contact details) and from ISO Central Secretariat through the ISO Store or by contacting the Marketing, Communication & Information department (see right-hand column).