Automotive Safety in the Development Pipeline of Highly Automated Vehicles: Rethinking Traditional Automotive Product-Creation Methods

Self-driving-car development on the global scale has reached a point where prototypes have proven the validity of the technology in various environments. Nevertheless, an increasing debate surrounds the serial production of these systems, with some experts arguing that real, trusted autonomous-driving capabilities may be at least a decade away, while large manufacturers are already promising such technology for the coming year or two. The pivotal point of the discussion concerns the application of current automotive-safety standards versus integrating safety into the technological-development workflow from the very beginning. This article gives an overview of the integration process and yet-to-be-solved challenges of testing and verification.