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📚 SAFETY STANDARDS

✅ What are Safety Standards?

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Safety standards in automotive software define structured processes and guidelines to ensure the functional safety, reliability, and compliance of electronic systems and software in vehicles.

📅 When do we use them?

  • During development of safety-critical ECUs (like brakes, airbags, ADAS)
  • When targeting compliance certifications
  • In design, testing, validation, and verification phases
  • Especially for ASIL-classified systems (A-D)

🌍 Where are they used?

  • In OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers
  • Across the entire V-model lifecycle
  • In hardware and software development for:
  • Powertrain
  • ADAS/Autonomous features
  • Lighting
  • Chassis
  • Diagnostics

❓ Why do we use them?

  • To prevent loss of life and damage
  • To fulfill legal, regulatory, and customer requirements
  • To reduce risk through structured safety analysis (FMEA, HARA)
  • To achieve ASIL compliance (Automotive Safety Integrity Level)

⚙️ How do we use them?

  • Apply ISO 26262 for functional safety
  • Use tools that comply with MISRA C, ASPICE, or ISO/PAS 21448 (SOTIF)
  • Follow structured requirements traceability, code verification, and testing
  • Perform FMEA, FTA, Safety Goals, HARA, Safety Cases

🌟 Benefits

  • ✅ Ensures human safety
  • ✅ Boosts product reliability and credibility
  • ✅ Meets regulatory mandates
  • ✅ Reduces product recalls and liability
  • ✅ Improves customer trust and brand value

Interview Questions and Answers on Safety Standards in Automotive

1. What is ISO 26262?
A functional safety standard for automotive electrical and electronic systems.

2. Why is ISO 26262 important?
It ensures the vehicle functions safely under both normal and fault conditions.

3. What is Functional Safety?
The absence of unreasonable risk due to hazards caused by malfunctioning behavior of E/E systems.

4. What are the major parts of ISO 26262?
It includes 12 parts, from vocabulary to hardware/software development, ASIL determination, etc.

5. What is ASIL?
Automotive Safety Integrity Level — defines risk levels (A to D) with D being the highest.

6. What is HARA?
Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment — used to determine ASIL and identify safety goals.

7. What is a Safety Goal?
A high-level safety requirement derived from HARA to mitigate hazards.

8. What is a Safety Case?
Documented evidence showing that safety goals are met and the system is safe.

9. What is FMEA?
Failure Modes and Effects Analysis — identifies potential failure points in a system.

10. What is FTA?
Fault Tree Analysis — top-down approach to identify causes of system failure.

11. What is the V-model in ISO 26262?
A development process showing relationship between development and verification activities.

12. What is the role of tool qualification in ISO 26262?
To ensure tools used in development don't introduce undetected errors.

13. What is freedom from interference?
Separation of software components with different ASILs to prevent negative impact.

14. What are safety mechanisms?
Software or hardware features that detect, prevent, or control failures.

15. What are the software development phases in ISO 26262?
Initiation, specification, architectural design, implementation, testing.

16. What is ASPICE?
Automotive SPICE — a process improvement model for automotive software development.

17. Difference between ASPICE and ISO 26262?
ASPICE focuses on process quality; ISO 26262 focuses on functional safety.

18. What is a safety requirement?
A requirement created to mitigate risks identified during safety analysis.

19. What is SOTIF?
Safety of the Intended Functionality — ISO/PAS 21448 — covers risks from system limitations, not failures.

20. What is the role of MISRA C?
A set of C programming guidelines to ensure safe and reliable code in automotive systems.

21. What are typical safety-related ECUs?
Airbag, ABS, ESP, ADAS controllers, engine control, etc.

22. What is software verification in ISO 26262?
Ensures software meets its requirements through testing and reviews.

23. What is hardware-software interface (HSI)?
Documentation describing interaction between hardware and software.

24. What are confidence levels in tool qualification?
TCL 1–3: higher confidence required for more critical tools.

25. Can ISO 26262 be applied to motorcycles?
Yes, through ISO 26262 Part 12 or extensions.

26. What is a dependent failure?
A failure in one component causing another to fail — must be analyzed and avoided.

27. What is robustness testing?
Testing to ensure software behaves reliably under stress or faults.

28. What is fault injection?
Introducing errors to validate the system's fault detection and handling.

29. What is a safety culture?
A company-wide mindset and practice focused on safety at every level.

30. What are software safety requirements?
Detailed requirements derived from safety goals to be implemented in code.

31. What is a development interface agreement (DIA)?
Defines responsibilities between supplier and OEM for safety activities.

32. What is traceability?
Mapping requirements to design, code, and test cases to ensure complete coverage.

33. What is latent fault?
A fault present in the system but not yet detected.

34. What is diagnostic coverage (DC)?
Percentage of faults that can be detected and handled properly.

35. What is safe state?
A system state that is considered safe in case of failure (e.g., reduced speed, emergency stop).

36. What is a QM level?
Quality Management level — non-safety-related classification in ISO 26262.

37. What’s the difference between ASIL A and ASIL D?
ASIL A is low criticality; ASIL D is the most stringent safety requirement.

38. What is software architectural design?
Defines the structure of software components and interactions, especially for safety partitioning.

39. What is requirement decomposition?
Breaking high-level requirements into detailed, manageable sub-requirements.

40. What are verification techniques?
Reviews, inspections, static analysis, dynamic testing, etc.

41. What is the purpose of safety validation?
To ensure the final product meets safety goals under real-world conditions.

42. What are safety-related anomalies?
Unexpected behaviors that could lead to unsafe operation.

43. What is change impact analysis?
Evaluating the impact of changes on safety requirements and the system.

44. What is a watch-dog timer?
A safety mechanism that resets the system in case of software hang.

45. How is memory protection achieved?
Using MMU, MPU, or OS services to avoid unsafe memory access.

46. How is software configuration managed?
Through version control, baselines, and change control to ensure traceability.

47. What’s the role of test coverage metrics?
To measure how much code or requirements have been tested.

48. Can ISO 26262 be applied to AI-based systems?
Only partially — SOTIF (ISO 21448) complements it for perception and learning systems.

49. How is documentation handled in safety projects?
Extensive documentation is mandatory for traceability, auditing, and compliance.

50. How do safety standards improve product quality?
They enforce disciplined development, robust testing, and reduce the risk of defects reaching users.