For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Volvo S90 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 Dodge Charger doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
The S90’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Charger doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the S90 and Charger have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The S90 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 Charger’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 Volvo S90 offers optional built in child booster seats. They’re more crash worthy than an added child seat because of their direct attachment to the seat. Dodge doesn’t offer the convenience and security of a built-in child booster seat in the Charger. Their owners must carry a heavy booster seat in and out of the vehicle; S90 owners can just fold their built-in child seat up or down.
The Volvo S90 has a standard driver’s side knee airbag mounted low on the dashboard. The knee airbag helps prevent the driver from sliding under the seatbelts or the main frontal airbag; this keeps the driver better positioned during a collision for maximum protection. A knee airbag also helps keep the legs from striking the dashboard, preventing knee and leg injuries in the case of a serious frontal collision. The Charger doesn’t offer knee airbags.
The S90 has standard Post-impact braking, which automatically apply the brakes in the event of a crash to help prevent secondary collisions and prevent further injuries. The Charger doesn’t offer a post collision braking system: in the event of a collision that triggers the airbags, more collisions are possible without the protection of airbags that may have already deployed.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the S90. But it costs extra on the Charger.
The S90’s standard 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. A lane departure warning system costs extra on the Charger.
The S90 has a standard 360° Camera to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Charger 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 S90 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 Charger’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the S90 has standard Cross Traffic Alert and Braking Intervention automatically engages the brakes to help avoid a collision. Dodge charges extra for Rear Cross Path Detection on the Charger and the Charger’s Rear Cross Path Detection does not include automatic braking.
The S90’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 Charger doesn’t offer a driver alert monitor.
Both the S90 and the Charger 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, daytime running lights and rearview cameras.
A significantly tougher test than their original offset frontal crash test, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety does 40 MPH small overlap frontal offset crash tests. In this test, where only 25% of the total width of the vehicle is struck, results indicate that the Volvo S90 is safer than the Charger:
|
|
S90 |
Charger |
| Overall Evaluation |
GOOD |
MARGINAL |
| Restraints |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Head Neck Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Head injury index |
76 |
222 |
| Steering Column Movement Rearward |
0 cm |
9 cm |
| Chest Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Max Chest Compression |
16 cm |
28 cm |
| Hip & Thigh Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Femur Force R/L |
.9/.7 kN |
3.7/3 kN |
| Hip & Thigh Injury Risk R/L |
0%/0% |
1%/0% |
| Lower Leg Evaluation |
GOOD |
POOR |
| Tibia index R/L |
.52/.44 |
1.21/.58 |
| Tibia forces R/L |
2.9/.6 kN |
3/4.7 kN |
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 “Acceptable” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the S90 its highest rating: “Top Safety Pick Plus” for 2022, a rating granted to only 128 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Charger is not even a standard “Top Safety Pick.”