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This paper investigates what challenges arise when extending the scope of functional safety for road vehicles to also include cooperative systems. Two generic alternatives are presented and compared with one another. The first alternative is to use a vehicle centric perspective as is the case in the traditional interpretation of ISO 26262 today. Here, an “item” (the top level system or systems for which functional safety is to be assured) is assumed to be confined to one vehicle. In the vehicle centric perspective inter-vehicle communication is not an architectural element and is therefore not a candidate for redundancy as part of the functional safety concept. The second alternative is to regard a cooperative system from a cooperative perspective. This implies that one item may span over several vehicles. The choice of perspective has implications in several ways.

Novel active safety functions are introduced in road vehicles and nowadays cars, trucks and buses start to be equipped with functions to avoid collisions. The performance of these active safety functions must be possible to test and assess. There are several initiatives addressing how to test active safety. These functions are under rapid development and there is presently, and in contrast to passive safety, no generally accepted assessment programme in place. Several initiatives have identified this need for standardised testing and assessment methods over the past years. This paper gives an overview and comparison of initiatives worldwide which lately have been or are currently dealing with the topic of active safety performance testing. Among others, performance in vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-pedestrian accident scenarios is being addressed by international initiatives: the eVALUE, ASSESS and AsPeCSS projects, the vFSS working group, the CAMP-CIB initiative and the AEB group.