Both the Escalade IQ and R1S have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Escalade IQ 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 R1S’ 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.
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 Escalade IQ are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The R1S doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Escalade IQ 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 R1S doesn’t offer front seat center airbags.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The Escalade IQ has standard Reverse Automatic Braking that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The R1S doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
A passive infrared night vision system optional on the Escalade IQ helps the driver to more easily detect people, animals or other objects in front of the vehicle at night. Using an infrared camera to detect heat, the system then displays the image on a monitor in the dashboard. The R1S doesn’t offer a night vision system.
Both the Escalade IQ and R1S have rear cross-traffic warning, but the Escalade IQ has Rear Cross Traffic Braking (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The R1S’ Rear Cross-Traffic Warning doesn’t automatically brake.
Both the Escalade IQ and the R1S have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver and front passenger knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, front seatbelt pretensioners, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, all wheel drive, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, around view monitors, rear cross-path warning and driver alert monitors.