For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Infiniti QX55 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 Acura RDX 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 QX55 are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The RDX doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The QX55 has standard Rear Automatic Braking that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The RDX doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
Both the QX55 and the RDX have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver and front passenger knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, plastic fuel tanks, 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, rear cross-path warning and available around view monitors.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does 35 MPH front crash tests on new vehicles. In this test, results indicate that the Infiniti QX55 is safer than the Acura RDX:
|
QX55 |
RDX |
OVERALL STARS |
5 Stars |
4 Stars |
|
Driver |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
4 Stars |
|
Passenger |
|
STARS |
4 Stars |
4 Stars |
HIC |
285 |
353 |
Neck Compression |
78 lbs. |
84 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.