For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Land Rover Range Rover Sport 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 XT5 doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
Both the Range Rover Sport and XT5 have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Range Rover Sport 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 XT5’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.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the Range Rover Sport. But it costs extra on the XT5.
When descending a steep, off-road slope, the Range Rover Sport’s standard Hill Descent Control allows you to creep down safely. The XT5 doesn’t offer Hill Descent Control.
The Range Rover Sport 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. Only the XT5 Premium Luxury/Sport offers a blind spot warning system.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Range Rover Sport has standard Rear Traffic Monitor and Rear Traffic Braking automatically engages the brakes to help avoid a collision. Only the XT5 Premium Luxury/Sport offers Rear Cross Traffic Alert and the XT5’s Rear Cross Traffic Alert does not include automatic braking.
The Range Rover Sport’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 XT5 doesn’t offer a driver alert monitor.
Both the Range Rover Sport and the XT5 have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems and rearview cameras.
The Land Rover Range Rover Sport weighs 652 to 2110 pounds more than the Cadillac XT5. The NHTSA advises that heavier vehicles are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.