For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Audi A6 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 Maserati Ghibli doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
The A6’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Ghibli doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the A6 and Ghibli have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The A6 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 Ghibli’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 Audi A6 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 Ghibli doesn’t offer a front passenger side knee airbag.
The A6 has a standard Secondary Collision Brake Assist, which automatically applies the brakes in the event of a crash to help prevent secondary collisions and prevent further injuries. The Ghibli 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.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The A6 Prestige has standard backup collision prevention system that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The Ghibli doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the A6. But it costs extra on the Ghibli.
Both the A6 and Ghibli offer rear cross-traffic warning, but the A6 with Rear Cross-Traffic Assist also has Automatic Brake Activation (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The Ghibli’s Rear Cross Path doesn’t automatically brake.
Both the A6 and the Ghibli 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, rearview cameras, available blind spot warning systems and around view monitors.