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

Aim
The aim of this organization is to provide advice in questions of quality assurance mainly to the automotive industry for the creation and application of safe, reliable software within vehicles. 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". The safety requirements of the software used in control units of Automobiles is specific as compared to that of other industries and devices.

MISRA creates, reviews and publishes (sells) standards, such as the MISRA C Coding Standard for the C programming language, first published in 1998.

History
MISRA was formed in the 1990s by a consortium of organizations formed in response to the UK Safety Critical Systems Research Programme. This program was supported by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.  Another program was "SafeIT".

Subsequently MISRA published its first guide, "Development guidelines for vehicle based software", which is considered a foundational element of functional safety by the engineering community. This was roughly ten years before the creation of the ISO 26262 standard.

Organization (MISRA Consortium) 
Since 2021, MISRA is managed by the MISRA Consortium Limited, an independent not-for-profit entity.

The Steering Committee is as follows (2024).

Steering Committee 

 Bentley Motors
 Delphi Diesel Systems
 Ford Motor Company Ltd
 HORIBA MIRA Ltd
 Peter Jesty Consulting Ltd
 Ricardo plc
 Visteon Engineering Services Ltd
 ZF (and former TRW, which was acquired by ZF)

Former members are: Protean Electric Ltd

Activities 
According to MISRA, the following activities are pursued:

 MISRA Autocode
 MISRA C
 MISRA C++
 MISRA Safety Argument
 Functional Safety

Guidelines 

MISRA guidelines are a set of development guidelines to ensure safe and reliable development of control software for electronic control units (ECUs). The primary focus of the MISRA guidelines is error prevention, not programming style. Among other things, the guidelines are intended to guide and support the following objectives

Ensure safety
Ensure security
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

As with many standards (for example, ISO, BSI, RTCA), the MISRA guideline documents are not free to users or implementers.

Coding guidelines 
MISRA guidelines are primarily focused and derived for the C and C++ programming languages. The main standard is known as "MISRA C" and has been updated several times.

See also
Automotive SPICE
CERT C
Coding standards
High Integrity C++
IEC 60730
IEC 61508
Software quality
Static program analysis

Weblinks

References

Automobile associations in the United Kingdom
Computer science institutes in the United Kingdom
Computer standards
Hinckley and Bosworth
Organisations based in Leicestershire
Science and technology in Leicestershire
Software design
Standards organisations in the United Kingdom
Technical specifications