Safety isn’t just the absence of accidents - it’s the presence of trust, empowerment, and accountability at every level. The result is a high-trust culture where process becomes practice and safety is a shared achievement. When people closest to the work feel supported to act on what they see, safety becomes the standard.
Thus, the deployment of autonomous driving systems (ADSs) requires not only technical rigor but also a resilient organizational safety culture that supports continuous learning, accountability, and transparent communication. This paper examines how safety culture can be operationalized in ADS development and operations by integrating guidance from standards such as UL 4600 and best practices from SAE AVSC. UL 4600’s requirements for systematic hazard analysis, safety case maintenance, and safety performance indicators (SPIs) are used as a foundation for quantifying organizational behavior within a Just Culture framework. This work draws on Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) research, including foundational contributions from Hollnagel, Reason, Dekker, Conklin, and Rasmussen, linking cultural dynamics to workforce involvement and effective safety controls.
We propose a taxonomy of seven safety-culture SPIs that trace directly to UL 4600 § 16.2.5 and demonstrate how they can be deployed within an incident-handling process. Each SPI is defined mathematically and mapped to process steps, enabling both leading- and lagging-indicator assessment of safety culture maturity. This proposed framework, which requires formal research validation, transforms SPIs from compliance metrics into qualitative diagnostic tools for trust, empowerment, and system learning. The approach aligns organizational processes with Just Culture principles, distinguishing human error, at-risk behavior, and reckless conduct, while supporting continuous improvement and evidence-based conformance with UL 4600 and related ADS safety standards.