For enhanced safety, the front and rear seat shoulder belts of the Dodge Charger have pretensioners to tighten the seatbelts and eliminate dangerous slack in the event of a collision. The BMW 8 Series doesn’t offer pretensioners for its rear seat belts.
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 Charger are reminded to check the back seat. The 8 Series doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
To provide maximum traction and stability on all roads, All-Wheel Drive is standard on the Charger. But it costs extra on the 8 Series.
The Charger 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. A system to reveal vehicles in the 8 Series’ blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Charger has standard Rear Cross Path Detection, helping the driver avoid collisions. BMW charges extra for Cross Traffic Warning on the 8 Series.
Both the Charger and the 8 Series have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver knee 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, rearview cameras, driver alert monitors and available around view monitors.
The Dodge Charger weighs 1147 to 1936 pounds more than the BMW 8 Series. The NHTSA advises that heavier cars are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.