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 RX are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Edge doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The RX has standard Intuitive Parking Assist with Automatic Braking that uses rear sensors to monitor for objects to the rear and automatically applies the brakes to prevent a collision. The Edge doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
The RX Premium/Luxury/500h F Sport offers an optional Panoramic View Monitor to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Edge 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 RX and Edge have rear cross-traffic warning, but the RX has Parking Support Brake (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The Edge’s Cross Traffic Alert doesn’t automatically brake.
Both the RX and the Edge have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver and front passenger knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, front and rear seatbelt pretensioners, height adjustable front shoulder belts, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, post-collision automatic braking systems, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras, rear cross-path warning, driver alert monitors and available all wheel drive.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does side impact tests on new vehicles. In this test, which crashes the vehicle into a flat barrier at 38.5 MPH and into a post at 20 MPH, results indicate that the Lexus RX is safer than the Ford Edge:
|
|
RX |
Edge |
|
|
Front Seat |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
| HIC |
58 |
84 |
| Chest Movement |
.3 inches |
1.1 inches |
| Abdominal Force |
99 lbs. |
190 lbs. |
|
|
Rear Seat |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
| HIC |
63 |
103 |
|
|
Into Pole |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
| Max Damage Depth |
15 inches |
16 inches |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.

