For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Toyota Land Cruiser have pretensioners to tighten the seatbelts and eliminate dangerous slack in the event of a collision and force limiters to limit the pressure the belts will exert on the passengers. The Audi Q5 doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
In the past twenty years hundreds of infants and young children have died after being left in vehicles, usually by accident. When turning the vehicle off, drivers of the Land Cruiser are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Q5 doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Toyota Land Cruiser has standard driver and front passenger side knee airbags mounted low on the dashboard. These airbags help prevent the driver and front passenger from sliding under their seatbelts or the main frontal airbags; this keeps them better positioned during a collision for maximum protection. Knee airbags also help keep the legs from striking the dashboard, preventing knee and leg injuries in the case of a serious frontal collision. The Q5 doesn’t offer knee airbags.
Both the Land Cruiser and the Q5 have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, all wheel drive, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, post-collision automatic braking systems, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras, rear cross-path warning, driver alert monitors and available around view monitors.
The Toyota Land Cruiser weighs 708 to 1366 pounds more than the Audi Q5. The NHTSA advises that heavier vehicles are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does side impact tests on new vehicles. In this test, which crashes the vehicle into a flat barrier at 38.5 MPH, results indicate that the Toyota Land Cruiser is safer than the Audi Q5:
|
Land Cruiser |
Q5 |
|
Front Seat |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
HIC |
25 |
60 |
Chest Movement |
.3 inches |
.6 inches |
Abdominal Force |
82 lbs. |
98 lbs. |
Hip Force |
109 lbs. |
279 lbs. |
|
Rear Seat |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
HIC |
19 |
185 |
Spine Acceleration |
20 G’s |
53 G’s |
Hip Force |
217 lbs. |
817 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.