For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Audi A4 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 Volkswagen Tiguan doesn’t offer pretensioners for its second-row seat belts.
The A4 Allroad’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Tiguan doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the A4 Allroad and Tiguan have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The A4 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 Tiguan’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.
The Audi A4 Allroad has standard driver and front passenger side knee airbags mounted low on the dashboard. These airbags helps 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 Tiguan doesn’t offer knee airbags.
The A4 Allroad has a standard Audi Backguard System, which use a specially designed headrest to protect the driver and front passenger from whiplash. During a rear-end collision, the Audi Backguard System moves the headrests forward to prevent neck and spine injuries. At the same time the pretensioning seatbelts fire, removing slack from the belts. The Tiguan doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the A4 Allroad. But it costs extra on the Tiguan.
The A4 Allroad’s standard lane departure warning system alerts a temporarily inattentive driver when the vehicle begins to leave its lane. A lane departure warning system costs extra on the Tiguan.
Both the A4 Allroad and the Tiguan have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, plastic fuel tanks, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, post-collision automatic braking systems, daytime running lights, rearview cameras, available blind spot warning systems, around view monitors 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 A4 Allroad is safer than the Volkswagen Tiguan:
|
|
A4 Allroad |
Tiguan |
|
|
Front Seat |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
| Hip Force |
308 lbs. |
337 lbs. |
|
|
Into Pole |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
| Max Damage Depth |
12 inches |
12 inches |
| Spine Acceleration |
47 G’s |
49 G’s |
| Hip Force |
666 lbs. |
855 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.
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 front crash prevention system, and its headlight’s “Good” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the A4 Allroad its highest rating: “Top Safety Pick Plus” for 2019, a rating granted to only 122 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Tiguan is only a standard “Top Safety Pick” for 2019.