‘Safety is the highest priority’ What does that mean?
When you have finished reading this you will understand what is means to make "safety is the highest priority" - at least in the context of ISO 26262.
One of the first stumbling blocks in an organisation trying to adopt ISO 26262 is ensuring that they have a suitable safety culture.
ISO 26262-2:2018 Annex B tries to be helpful and give examples of what is a good safety culture and what is not a good safety culture. The idea is that if the examples of a good safety culture are present in your organisation then you have a good safety culture.
One of the examples of a good safety culture is "Safety is the highest priority".
This is frequently cited in the organisations key policies and mission statements, often without an accompanying definition.
But what does "Safety is the highest priority" mean, and when we make this commitment - what are we committing to.
Does it mean we have to achieve perfect safety, and zero risk to the health of people, before we commence operations and sell products. When we say safety is our highest priority then we have to achieve zero risk and continue to pour funds and resource into the attainment of this goal, to the detriment of all other goals - such as making a profit.
No it does not.
It means we make as our highest priority that we will ensure that our products and operations are free from unreasonable risk to the health of people. The unreasonable part being determined by judging what the average person (in the chosen market) would consider to be acceptable in the specific context that the risk is present in.
It means we commit to ensuring this is achieved at all times, against all conflicting constraints, such as time, or financial constraints.
It means we wont put a product into the market unless this has been achieved. Our products have to be free from unreasonable risk.
Risk is context dependent. Therefore the context is important. There is a higher level of acceptable risk for an F1 racing driver, than for a taxi driver - per mile driven.
Ensuring that the product is free from unreasonable risk is generally achieved by ensuring that the risk of using the product is at least as good as for any other comparable product in that market.
Users of a vehicle know that there is a certain risk associated with driving or being a passenger in a vehicle. They accept the risk by their actions of using the vehicle. But they do not accept that the risk is greater for using one vehicle over another.
They expect that the risk would be comparable to other vehicles.
Therefore the product has to be developed, produced and maintained according to state of practice for that type of product.
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