For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Hyundai Santa Cruz 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 Jeep Gladiator doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
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 Santa Cruz are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Gladiator doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Santa Cruz has standard front and rear seat side-impact airbags and head airbags, which act as a forgiving barrier between the passengers and the door. Combined with high-strength steel door beams this system increases protection from broadside collisions. The Gladiator doesn't offer rear-seat side-impact airbags, only ones for front seat occupants.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The Santa Cruz SEL/SEL Premium/Limited has standard Parking Collision Avoidance Assist that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The Gladiator doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
The Santa Cruz’s lane departure warning system alerts a temporarily inattentive driver when the vehicle begins to leave its lane and gently nudges the vehicle back towards its lane. The Gladiator doesn’t offer a lane departure warning system.
The Santa Cruz Limited has a standard Surround View Monitor to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Gladiator only offers a rear monitor and rear parking sensors that beep or flash a light. That doesn’t help with obstacles to the front or sides.
The Santa Cruz has a standard blind spot warning system that uses sensors to alert the driver to objects in the vehicle’s blind spots where the side view mirrors don’t reveal them. A system to reveal vehicles in the Gladiator’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Santa Cruz has standard Rear Cross-Traffic Collision Warning and Rear Cross-Traffic Collision-Avoidance Assist automatically engages the brakes to help avoid a collision. Jeep charges extra for Rear Cross Path Detection on the Gladiator and the Gladiator’s Rear Cross Path Detection does not include automatic braking.
The Santa Cruz’s driver alert monitor detects an inattentive driver then sounds a warning and suggests a break. According to the NHTSA, drivers who fall asleep cause about 100,000 crashes and 1500 deaths a year. The Gladiator doesn’t offer a driver alert monitor.
For better protection of the passenger compartment, the Santa Cruz 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 Gladiator uses a body-on-frame design, which has no frame members above the floor of the vehicle.
Both the Santa Cruz and the Gladiator have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, plastic fuel tanks, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, rearview cameras and available all wheel drive.
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 available headlight’s “Good” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the Santa Cruz the rating of “Top Safety Pick” for 2022, a rating granted to only 174 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Gladiator does not qualify as a “Top Safety Pick.”