For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Land Rover Range Rover Velar 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 X1 doesn’t offer pretensioners for the rear seat belts.
Both the Range Rover Velar and X1 have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Range Rover Velar 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 X1’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 Range Rover Velar. But it costs extra on the X1.
The Range Rover Velar offers an optional 3D Surround Camera to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The X1 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 Range Rover Velar’s 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 X1 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 Range Rover Velar’s standard 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 X1 doesn’t offer a cross-path warning system.
Both the Range Rover Velar and the X1 have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, 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.
The Land Rover Range Rover Velar weighs 424 to 894 pounds more than the BMW X1. The NHTSA advises that heavier vehicles are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.