For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Audi A6 Allroad 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 BMW X3 doesn’t offer pretensioners for the rear seat belts.
For enhanced safety, the front seat shoulder belts of the Audi A6 Allroad are height-adjustable to accommodate a wide variety of driver and passenger heights. A better fit can prevent injuries and the increased comfort also encourages passengers to buckle up. The BMW X3 doesn’t offer height-adjustable seat belts.
Both the A6 Allroad and X3 have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The A6 Allroad 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 X3’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.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the A6 Allroad. But it costs extra on the X3.
A passive infrared night vision system optional on the A6 Allroad Prestige helps the driver to more easily detect people, animals or other objects in front of the vehicle at night. Using an infrared camera to detect heat, the system then displays the image on a monitor in the dashboard. The X3 doesn’t offer a night vision system.
Both the A6 Allroad and the X3 have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver and front passenger knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, post-collision automatic braking systems, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, rearview cameras, available blind spot warning systems and rear cross-path warning.
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 and into a post at 20 MPH, results indicate that the Audi A6 Allroad is safer than the BMW X3:
|
|
A6 Allroad |
X3 |
|
|
Front Seat |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
| Hip Force |
262 lbs. |
275 lbs. |
|
|
Rear Seat |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
| Spine Acceleration |
43 G’s |
45 G’s |
| Hip Force |
716 lbs. |
794 lbs. |
|
|
Into Pole |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
| Max Damage Depth |
13 inches |
13 inches |
| Spine Acceleration |
39 G’s |
43 G’s |
| Hip Force |
514 lbs. |
624 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.
Instrumented handling tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and analysis of its dimensions indicate that the A6 Allroad, with its five-star roll-over rating, is 8.2% to 8.3% less likely to roll over than the X3, which received a four-star rating.
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, its standard vehicle-to-pedestrian front crash prevention system, and its standard headlight’s “Good” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the A6 Allroad its highest rating: “Top Pick Plus” for 2021, a rating granted to only 73 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The X3 has not been fully tested, yet.