For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Hyundai Sonata 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.
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 Sonata are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Charger doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Hyundai Sonata 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 Sonata’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 Sonata 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 Sonata has standard Rear Cross-Traffic Collision Warning and Rear Cross-Traffic Collision-Avoidance Assist 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 Sonata’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 Sonata 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, rearview cameras and available all wheel drive.
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 Hyundai Sonata is safer than the Charger:
|
|
Sonata |
Charger |
| Overall Evaluation |
GOOD |
MARGINAL |
| Restraints |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Head Neck Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Head injury index |
96 |
222 |
| Peak Head Forces |
0 G’s |
0 G’s |
| Steering Column Movement Rearward |
0 cm |
9 cm |
| Chest Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Max Chest Compression |
26 cm |
28 cm |
| Hip & Thigh Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Femur Force R/L |
.7/.1 kN |
3.7/3 kN |
| Hip & Thigh Injury Risk R/L |
0%/0% |
1%/0% |
| Lower Leg Evaluation |
GOOD |
POOR |
| Tibia index R/L |
.61/.45 |
1.21/.58 |
| Tibia forces R/L |
2.6/.5 kN |
3/4.7 kN |