Learn ISO 26262
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ISO 26262 is the international standard for the functional safety of electrical and electronic systems in road vehicles. It defines a safety lifecycle, from management and concept through system, hardware and software development to production, operation and decommissioning, and it grades the rigour required by an Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL). The current edition is ISO 26262:2018.

ISO 26262:2018 has 12 parts. The 2011 first edition had 10. The second edition added Part 11, guidelines for applying ISO 26262 to semiconductors, and Part 12, the adaptation for motorcycles. Parts 1 to 10 cover vocabulary, management, the concept phase, system, hardware and software development, production and operation, supporting processes, ASIL-oriented analyses and general guidelines.

An ASIL is determined in the hazard analysis and risk assessment (HARA) by rating each hazardous event on three parameters: severity (S0 to S3), probability of exposure (E0 to E4) and controllability (C0 to C3). The combination maps to QM (no ASIL) or ASIL A, B, C or D, with D the most demanding. The rating is made per hazardous event in its operational situation, never for a component on its own.

FMEA is inductive and bottom-up: it starts from individual failure modes and traces their effects up to the system. FTA is deductive and top-down: it starts from an undesired top event and decomposes its causes through logic gates down to basic events, which yields minimal cut sets and a top-event probability. ISO 26262 uses both, and the platform has an interactive simulator for each.

Automotive safety engineers, functional safety managers, ADAS and automated-driving engineers, hardware and software engineers moving into safety-related work, assessors, and students preparing for a functional safety career. Companies use the Teams plan to train whole departments on one contract.

The free plan includes the complete Functional Safety Concept guide with its videos, three work-product templates, one process description, the Markov Chain Simulator, five random practice exams a month and your exam history. No credit card is required, and it does not expire.

4,799 questions a subscriber can actually be asked, covering Parts 2 to 11 of ISO 26262:2018 in five formats: multiple choice, fill in the blank, block diagram, drag and drop and AI-graded open text. Every question has a written explanation. Exams run in random, adaptive and thematic modes.

9 simulators: FTA (fault trees, minimal cut sets, top-event probability), FMEA (worksheet with action priority), FMEDA (SPFM, LFM and PMHF against ASIL targets), Markov chains (continuous-time reliability models), STPA, DFA (dependent failure analysis), cascading failures and freedom from interference, HAZOP and a GSN safety case builder. Markov is free for every registered user; the full set is on the Expert plan.

IEC 61508 is the generic functional safety standard for electrical, electronic and programmable systems across industries. ISO 26262 is its automotive adaptation: it uses ASILs instead of SILs, adds the HARA with severity, exposure and controllability, defines the hardware architectural metrics SPFM, LFM and PMHF, and covers the full vehicle lifecycle from item definition to decommissioning.

ISO 26262 is not a law, but it is the de facto requirement of the automotive supply chain. Most OEMs make compliance a condition of supply, and it is the recognised state of the art that regulators and courts refer to when a product-liability question arises, so in practice it is mandatory for anyone building safety-related vehicle electronics.

Yes. The Expert Consultation service connects you with human functional safety engineers, not an AI. You submit the question, receive a quote, and get a written answer with follow-up clarification. Typical topics are safety analyses, ASIL decomposition and safety mechanisms, gap assessments and audit preparation, hardware metrics and software partitioning.

A safety case is the structured argument, supported by evidence, that an item is acceptably safe for its intended use. It compiles the work products of the safety lifecycle into claims, arguments and evidence, often in Goal Structuring Notation (GSN), and it is what the independent functional safety assessment reviews.