Both the Palisade and Sequoia have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Palisade has power child safety locks, allowing the driver to activate and deactivate them from the driver's seat and to know when they're engaged. The Sequoia’s child locks have to be individually engaged at each rear door with a manual switch. The driver can’t know the status of the locks without opening the doors and checking them.
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 Palisade are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Sequoia doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
Full-time four-wheel drive is optional on the Palisade. Full-time four-wheel drive gives added traction for safety in all conditions, not just off-road, like the only system available on the Sequoia.
When descending a steep, off-road slope, the Palisade 4WD’s standard Hill Descent Control allows you to creep down safely. The Sequoia doesn’t offer Hill Descent Control.
The Palisade Limited/Calligraphy has a standard Multi-view Camera System to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Sequoia only offers a rear monitor and front and rear parking sensors that beep or flash a light. That doesn’t help with obstacles to the sides.
For better protection of the passenger compartment, the Palisade uses safety cell construction with a three-dimensional high-strength frame that surrounds the passenger compartment. It provides extra impact protection and a sturdy mounting location for door hardware and side impact beams. The Sequoia uses a body-on-frame design, which has no frame members above the floor of the vehicle.
Both the Palisade and the Sequoia have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, front seatbelt pretensioners, height adjustable front shoulder belts, plastic fuel tanks, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras, rear cross-path warning and driver alert monitors.
For its top level performance in IIHS driver and passenger-side small overlap frontal, moderate overlap frontal, side impact, roof strength and head restraint tests, its standard vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention system, with its optional vehicle-to-pedestrian front crash prevention system, and its standard headlight’s “Good” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the Palisade its highest rating: “Top Pick Plus” for 2021, a rating granted to only 63 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Sequoia has not been tested, yet.