For enhanced safety, the front and second-row seat shoulder belts of the Hyundai Santa Fe 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 Toyota 4Runner doesn’t offer pretensioners for its second-row seat belts.
Both the Santa Fe and 4Runner have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Santa Fe 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 4Runner’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.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The Santa Fe Limited/Calligraphy has standard Parking Collision Avoidance Assist that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The 4Runner doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
Both the Santa Fe and 4Runner have rear cross-traffic warning, but the Santa Fe has Rear Cross-Traffic Collision-Avoidance Assist (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The 4Runner’s Rear Cross-Traffic Alert doesn’t automatically brake.
For better protection of the passenger compartment, the Santa Fe uses safety cell construction with a three-dimensional high-strength frame that surrounds the passenger compartment. It provides extra impact protection and a sturdy mounting location for door hardware and side impact beams. The 4Runner uses a body-on-frame design, which has no frame members above the floor of the vehicle.
Both the Santa Fe and the 4Runner 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, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras, rear cross-path warning, driver alert monitors, available all wheel drive and around view monitors.
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 Santa Fe is safer than the 4Runner:
|
|
Santa Fe |
4Runner |
| Overall Evaluation |
GOOD |
MARGINAL |
| Restraints |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Head Neck Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Head injury index |
76 |
142 |
| Peak Head Forces |
0 G’s |
0 G’s |
| Steering Column Movement Rearward |
1 cm |
12 cm |
| Chest Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Hip & Thigh Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Femur Force R/L |
.5/.6 kN |
3.9/2.4 kN |
| Hip & Thigh Injury Risk R/L |
0%/0% |
1%/0% |
| Lower Leg Evaluation |
GOOD |
ACCEPTABLE |
| Tibia index R/L |
.4/.39 |
.95/.85 |
| Tibia forces R/L |
1.5/1 kN |
5/2.9 kN |
The Hyundai Santa Fe achieved a “Top Safety Pick” rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) for the 2024 model year. This recognition was based on its impressive performance in the small overlap frontal crash test, updated side impact crash test, headlight evaluations, and pedestrian crash prevention testing. The 4Runner is not a “Top Safety Pick” for 2024.