For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Volvo S90 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.
The S90’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The CT5 doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the S90 and CT5 have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The S90 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.
The Volvo S90 offers optional built in child booster seats. They’re more crash worthy than an added child seat because of their direct attachment to the seat. Cadillac doesn’t offer the convenience and security of a built-in child booster seat in the CT5. Their owners must carry a heavy booster seat in and out of the vehicle; S90 owners can just fold their built-in child seat up or down.
The S90 has a standard Whiplash Protection System (WHIPS), which use a specially designed headrest to protect the driver and front passenger from whiplash. During a rear-end collision, the WHIPS moves the headrests forward to prevent neck and spine injuries. At the same time the pretensioning seatbelts fire, removing slack from the belts. The CT5 doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
The S90 has standard Post-impact braking, which automatically apply the brakes in the event of a crash to help prevent secondary collisions and prevent further injuries. The CT5 doesn’t offer a post collision braking system: in the event of a collision that triggers the airbags, more collisions are possible without the protection of airbags that may have already deployed.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the S90. But it costs extra on the CT5.
Both the S90 and CT5 have rear cross-traffic warning, but the S90 has Braking Intervention (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 S90’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 S90 and the CT5 have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver knee 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, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras and rear cross-path warning.
The Volvo S90 weighs 469 to 1014 pounds more than the Cadillac CT5. The NHTSA advises that heavier cars are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.
For its top level performance in IIHS driver and passenger-side small overlap frontal, moderate overlap frontal, side impact, roof strength and head restraint tests, its standard vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention system, its standard vehicle-to-pedestrian front crash prevention system, and its standard headlight’s “Acceptable” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the S90 its highest rating: “Top Safety Pick Plus” for 2022, a rating granted to only 131 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The CT5 has not been tested, yet.