Both the Aviator and GX have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Aviator 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 GX’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.
For better protection of the passenger compartment, the Aviator uses safety cell construction with a three-dimensional high-strength frame that surrounds the passenger compartment. It provides extra impact protection and a sturdy mounting location for door hardware and side impact beams. The GX uses a body-on-frame design, which has no frame members above the floor of the vehicle.
Both the Aviator and the GX 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 post at 20 MPH, results indicate that the Lincoln Aviator is safer than the Lexus GX:
|
Aviator |
GX |
|
Into Pole |
|
STARS |
5 Stars |
5 Stars |
Max Damage Depth |
12 inches |
16 inches |
HIC |
288 |
332 |
Spine Acceleration |
39 G’s |
42 G’s |
Hip Force |
573 lbs. |
702 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.