Automotive System Safety

8Risk Reduction for Automotive Applications

History

Risk reduction has been important in the automotive industry since long before the ISO 26262 standard was released on November 15, 2011. For example, mirrors were included to improve the driver's ability to see the vehicle's surroundings. Even the earliest of vehicles had two headlights to allow the driver to see in the dark even if one failed. And bumpers were added to the front of vehicles, along with additional features to improve crashworthiness.

Systematic analysis techniques developed in other industries were carried over to the automotive industry and applied there. The military has used failure mode and effects criticality analysis (FMECA) since 1949 [10], and NASA was using it by the 1960s [11]. Systematic analyses are important for military use in order to reduce the risk of mission failure due to system failures. Such systematic analyses can provide confidence that all potential causes of failure have been analyzed. The intent is to analyze the failure modes of components so that the effects of these failures can be mitigated. These mitigations may include redundancy or a software switch to another mode of operation to complete the mission. Each of these failures can be prioritized based on its criticality: a combination of the severity and occurrence of the effect.

By the 1970s, failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) techniques were being used in the automotive industry, and they were standardized by the Automotive ...