For enhanced safety, the front and second-row seat shoulder belts of the Land Rover Discovery 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 Cherokee doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
Both the Discovery and Cherokee have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Discovery 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 Cherokee’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 Discovery has a standard 3D Surround Camera to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Cherokee 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.
Both the Discovery and Cherokee have rear cross-traffic warning, but the Discovery has Rear Traffic Braking (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The Cherokee’s Rear Cross-Path Detection doesn’t automatically brake.
The Discovery’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 Cherokee doesn’t offer a driver alert monitor.
Both the Discovery and the Cherokee have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, four-wheel antilock brakes, all wheel drive, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras and rear cross-path warning.
The Land Rover Discovery weighs 605 to 1270 pounds more than the Jeep Cherokee. The NHTSA advises that heavier vehicles are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.