Re-imagining ISO 26262 in the Age of Autonomous Vehicles: Enhancing Controllability through Transferability and Predictability

Functional safety standards for cars were written assuming a human driver who can intervene when something goes wrong. Autonomous vehicles fundamentally break that assumption, yet the industry still largely operates under frameworks designed for human-controlled systems. This paper proposes concrete, auditable extensions to the ISO 26262 standard by introducing two new measurable dimensions: how well a vehicle can hand off control to fallback systems, and how predictably it behaves to other road users. For regulators, insurers, and automotive engineers, these additions provide a practical pathway to certifying driverless systems with the same rigor applied to traditional vehicles — without discarding decades of established safety methodology. Authors: Chaitanya Shinde, Hadi Hajieghrary, Paul Schmitt, Adam Shoemaker, Bodo Seifert, Steve Kenner Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.07437v1