For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Nissan Rogue 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 Fiat 500X 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 Rogue are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The 500X doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Nissan Rogue has standard driver and front passenger side knee airbags mounted low on the dashboard. These airbags helps prevent the driver and front passenger from sliding under their seatbelts or the main frontal airbags; this keeps them better positioned during a collision for maximum protection. Knee airbags also help keep the legs from striking the dashboard, preventing knee and leg injuries in the case of a serious frontal collision. The 500X doesn’t offer a front passenger side knee airbag.
The Rogue Platinum has a standard front seat center airbag, which deploys between the driver and front passenger, protecting them from injuries caused by striking each other in serious side impacts. The 500X doesn’t offer front seat center airbags.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tests front crash prevention systems. With a score of 6 points, IIHS rates the Automatic Emergency Braking in the Rogue as “Superior.” The 500X scores only 4 points and is rated only “Advanced.”
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The Rogue has standard Rear Automatic Braking that use rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically apply the brakes to prevent a collision. The 500X doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
The Rogue’s standard lane departure warning system alerts a temporarily inattentive driver when the vehicle begins to leave its lane. A lane departure warning system costs extra on the 500X and is only available on 500X Sport.
The Rogue SL/Platinum has a standard Around View® Monitor to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The 500X only offers a rear monitor and front and rear parking sensors that beep or flash a light. That doesn’t help with obstacles to the sides.
The Rogue 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 500X’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Rogue has standard Rear Cross Traffic Alert, helping the driver avoid collisions. Fiat charges extra for Rear Cross Path Detection on the 500X, and only on the Sport.
Both the Rogue and the 500X have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, rearview cameras and available all wheel drive.
For its performance in IIHS driver-side and passenger-side small overlap frontal, moderate overlap frontal, updated side impact, headlight, and daytime pedestrian crash prevention testing, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the Rogue the rating of “Top Safety Pick” for 2023, a rating granted to only 85 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The 500X last would have qualified as a “Top Safety Pick” in 2017.