For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Audi RS Q8 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 Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
The RS Q8’s pre-crash front seatbelts will tighten automatically in the event the vehicle detects an impending crash, improving protection against injury significantly. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio doesn’t offer pre-crash pretensioners.
Both the RS Q8 and Stelvio Quadrifoglio have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The RS Q8 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 Stelvio Quadrifoglio’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 RS Q8’s standard pretensioning seatbelts also sense rear collisions and remove slack from the seatbelts to help protect the occupants from whiplash and other injuries. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
The RS Q8 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 Stelvio Quadrifoglio 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 RS Q8 has standard Maneuver Braking that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
Earlier warning of stopped traffic, traffic signals, dangerous road conditions, weather, or accidents, can keep driver's safer and prevent crashes. The RS Q8 has Car-to-X Services, a system that seemlesly communicates important warnings to the driver about impending danger, if they're available. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio doesn’t offer a system that can receive automated systems from infrastructure.
A passive infrared night vision system optional on the RS Q8 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 Stelvio Quadrifoglio doesn’t offer a night vision system.
The RS Q8 has a standard Top View Cameras to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio only offers a rear monitor and front and rear parking sensors that beep or flash a light. That doesn’t help with obstacles to the sides.
Both the RS Q8 and Stelvio Quadrifoglio have rear cross-traffic warning, but the RS Q8 has Automatic Brake Activation (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio’s Rear Cross-Path Detection doesn’t automatically brake.
Both the RS Q8 and the Stelvio Quadrifoglio have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, 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, rearview cameras and rear cross-path warning.
The Audi RS Q8 weighs 1204 pounds more than the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio. The NHTSA advises that heavier vehicles are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.