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 Bolt are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The SE Countryman doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tests front crash prevention systems. With a score of 6 points, IIHS rates the Automatic Emergency Braking optional in the Bolt as “Superior.” The SE Countryman scores only 3 points and is rated only “Advanced.”
The Bolt offers optional Surround Vision to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The SE Countryman 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.
The Bolt’s optional blind spot warning system uses sensors to alert the driver to objects in the vehicle’s blind spots where the side view mirrors don’t reveal them. The SE Countryman doesn’t offer a system to reveal objects in the driver’s blind spots.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Bolt’s optional rear cross-path warning system uses sensors in the rear bumper to alert the driver to vehicles approaching from the side, helping the driver avoid collisions. The SE Countryman doesn’t offer a cross-path warning system.
Both the Bolt and the SE Countryman have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver and front passenger knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, front seatbelt pretensioners, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems and rearview cameras.
For its top level performance in IIHS driver-side small overlap frontal, moderate overlap frontal, side impact, rear impact and roof-crush tests, with its optional front crash prevention system, its “Acceptable” rating in the new passenger-side small overlap crash test, and its headlight’s “Acceptable” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the Bolt the rating of “Top Pick” for 2019, a rating granted to only 174 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The SE Countryman was last qualified as a “Top Pick” in 2017.