Software architecture design is an important step of software development. Currently, there are various design methods available and each is focusing on certain perspective of architecture design. Especially, quality-based methods have received a lot of attentions and have been well developed for single system architecture design. However, the use of quality-based design methods is limited in software product line (SPL) because of the complexity and variabilities existing in SPL architecture. With the increasing attention to software safety, improving software safety has already become a more important issue, especially for safety-critical systems. This study aims at surveying existing research on Software Product Line Architecture (SPLA) design based on quality attributes, and to give an overview of the intersection of the areas of software product line architecture design and Safety Driven Design in order to classifying existing work, and discover open issues for further research. Also this study investigates safety analysis at the architectural level, and Safety-based Software Product Line Architecture Design (SSPLAD) approaches. Safety-driven software product line architecture design seems to be a ‘‘discussion” topic. The study shows that there are a large number of SPLA design methods. However, the use of safety-based design methods is limited in software product lines (SPL) due to the variability property that can potentially result in a large number of possible systems and because of the complexity existing in safety attribute itself.