A Framework for Automotive Safety Cases

Report, 2008

The automotive industry is utilizing electronics to develop new safety related functionality. Safety cases are an approach to providing an argument for the safety of such systems that is currently used in other industries. This work presents a framework for an automotive safety case, where the approach is adapted to an automotive context. The framework builds on the drivers, usage areas, issues and requirements established in an earlier study and considers related work and the automotive industry context. The main contribution of the framework is a definition of what risks should be addressed, a generic safety case on the vehicle level, a decomposition of the generic safety argument, and a proposed set of safety argumentation modules that are suitable for reuse from safety case to safety case. Further, the paper includes a description of how the safety case can be utilized in an automotive development process and how it relates to the upcoming ISO-26262 standard. A flexible approach is taken, enabling an interested organization in the automotive industry to select parts of the framework for implementation. The framework provides a base for introducing safety cases in the automotive industry, even though further research is needed to verify it in practice.