Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) is an organization that produces guidelines for the software developed for electronic components used in Automotive Industry. It is a collaboration between vehicle manufacturers, component suppliers and engineering consultancies.

Aim

The aim of this organization is to provide important advice to the automotive industry for the creation and application of safe, reliable software within vehicles. The safety requirements of the software used in Automobiles is different from that of other areas such as healthcare, industrial automation, aerospace etc. The mission statement of MISRA is "To provide assistance to the automotive industry in the application and creation within vehicle systems of safe and reliable software".

Formation

MISRA was formed by a consortium of organizations formed in response to the UK Safety Critical Systems REsearch Programme. This programme was supported by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences , mainly to universities in the United Kingdom...

.

MISRA Consortium

The MISRA steering committee constitutes the following organizations.

• AB Automotive Electronics Ltd
• Ford Motor Company
  Ford Motor Company
  Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
  
   Ltd
• Jaguar Cars Ltd
• Lotus Engineering
• MIRA Ltd
  Motor Industry Research Association
  MIRA Ltd, formerly known as the Motor Industry Research Association, is a limited company based near Nuneaton in Hinckley and Bosworth, Leicestershire in the United Kingdom, which provides product engineering, research, testing, information and certification services to the automotive...
  
  
• Ricardo UK Ltd
• TRW Automotive Electronics
• The University of Leeds
• Visteon
  Visteon
  Visteon is one of the world's largest suppliers of automotive parts. The company formed in 1997 and spun off from the Ford Motor Company in 2000. In 2005, Visteon moved to new headquarters in Van Buren Township, Michigan...
  
  

The committee mainly includes vehicle manufacturers and component suppliers.

The Guidelines

MISRA guidelines are the development guidelines for vehicle based software. The guidelines are intended to achieve the following.

• Ensure Safety
• Bring in robustness, reliability to the software.
• Human safety must take precedence when in conflict with security of property.
• Consider both random and systematic faults in system design.
• Demonstrate robustness, not just rely on the absence of failures.
• Application of safety considerations across the design, manufacture, operation, servicing and disposal of products.

The guidelines are not fully public. This hinders their adoption

Other languages

Currently MISRA guidelines are produced for C

MISRA C

MISRA C is a software development standard for the C programming language developed by MISRA . Its aims are to facilitate code safety, portability and reliability in the context of embedded systems, specifically those systems programmed in ISO C...

and C++ programming languages only. MISRA C++ was launched on March 2008.