For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Jaguar XF 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 Cadillac CT5 doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
Both the XF and CT5 have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The XF 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 CT5’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.
When descending a steep, off-road slope, the XF’s standard All Surface Progress Control allows you to creep down safely. The CT5 doesn’t offer All Surface Progress Control.
Both the XF and CT5 have rear cross-traffic warning, but the XF has Rear Traffic Braking (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The CT5’s Rear Cross Traffic Alert doesn’t automatically brake.
The XF’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 CT5 doesn’t offer a driver alert monitor.
Both the XF and the CT5 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, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras and rear cross-path warning.