# Safety of the Intended Driving Behavior Using Rulebooks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.04472 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04472/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 May 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Concrete Problems in AI Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06565/) (2016)
- [On a Formal Model of Safe and Scalable Self-driving Cars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06374/) (2017)
- [Accelerated Evaluation of Automated Vehicles Safety in Lane Change Scenarios Based on Importance Sampling Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.04965/) (2016)
- [Liability, Ethics, and Culture-Aware Behavior Specification using Rulebooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09355/) (2019)
- [Adaptive Stress Testing with Reward Augmentation for Autonomous Vehicle Validation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.01046/) (2019)
- [Arithmetic-Geometric Mean Robustness for Control from Signal Temporal Logic Specifications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05186/) (2019)
- [Towards a Framework to Manage Perceptual Uncertainty for Safe Automated Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03438/) (2019)
- [Minimum-violation LTL Planning with Conflicting Specifications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1303.3679/) (2013)
- [Towards a Skill- And Ability-Based Development Process for Self-Aware Automated Road Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02532/) (2017)
- [Priority-based coordination of autonomous and legacy vehicles at intersection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1407.5813/) (2014)
- [Resilient Sensor Architecture Design and Tradespace Analysis for Autonomous Vehicle Localization and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.08541/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [The Reasonable Crowd: Towards evidence-based and interpretable models of driving behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13507/) (2021)
- [Receding Horizon Planning with Rule Hierarchies for Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03323/) (2022)
- [Autoware.Flex: Human-Instructed Dynamically Reconfigurable Autonomous Driving Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16265/) (2024)
- [Quantification of Actual Road User Behavior on the Basis of Given Traffic Rules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09269/) (2022)
- [Balancing Progress and Safety: A Novel Risk-Aware Objective for RL in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06737/) (2025)
- [ScenicRules: An Autonomous Driving Benchmark with Multi-Objective Specifications and Abstract Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16073/) (2026)
- [A Systematic Literature Review on Safety of the Intended Functionality for Automated Driving Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02498/) (2025)
- [Real-Time Rulebook-Aware Nonlinear MPC for Autonomous Driving with Priority-Biased Tiered Slacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.10975/) (2026)
- [MakSafe: A Spatiotemporal Semantic Framework for Formal Specification and Compliance Checking of Road Vehicle Safety Rules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.19735/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are complex systems that drive in uncertain environments and potentially navigate unforeseeable situations. Safety of these systems requires not only an absence of malfunctions but also high performance of functions in many different scenarios. The ISO/PAS 21448 [1] guidance recommends a process to ensure the Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) for road vehicles. This process starts with a functional specification that fully describes the intended functionality and further includes the verification and validation that the AV meets this specification. For the path planning function, defining the correct sequence of control actions for each vehicle in all potential driving situations is intractable. In this paper, the authors provide a link between the Rulebooks framework, presented by [2], and the SOTIF process. We establish that Rulebooks provide a functional description of the path planning task in an AV and discuss the potential usage of the method for verification and validation.