For enhanced safety, the front shoulder belts of the Chevrolet Blazer are height-adjustable, and the rear seat shoulder belts have child comfort guides to move the belt to properly fit children. A better fit can prevent injuries and the increased comfort also encourages children to buckle up. The Jeep Wrangler has only front height-adjustable seat belts.
The Chevrolet Blazer has a standard driver’s side knee airbag mounted low on the dashboard. The knee airbag helps prevent the driver from sliding under the seatbelts or the main frontal airbag; this keeps the driver better positioned during a collision for maximum protection. A knee airbag also helps keep the legs from striking the dashboard, preventing knee and leg injuries in the case of a serious frontal collision. The Wrangler doesn’t offer knee airbags.
The Blazer’s lane departure warning system alerts a temporarily inattentive driver when the vehicle begins to leave its lane and gently nudges the vehicle back towards its lane. The Wrangler doesn’t offer a lane departure warning system.
The Blazer offers an optional HD Surround Vision to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Wrangler only offers a rear monitor and rear parking sensors that beep or flash a light. That doesn’t help with obstacles to the front or sides.
The Chevrolet Blazer offers an optional HD Surround Vision and it also offers an optional rear camera washer to make backing always safe, regardless of road dirt or grime, while the Jeep Wrangler doesn’t offer a camera washer, requiring manual cleaning.
The Blazer 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 Wrangler’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Blazer has standard Rear Cross Traffic Alert, helping the driver avoid collisions. Jeep charges extra for Rear Cross Path Detection on the Wrangler.
For better protection of the passenger compartment, the Blazer 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 Wrangler uses a body-on-frame design, which has no frame members above the floor of the vehicle.
Both the Blazer and the Wrangler have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, side-impact head airbags, front seatbelt pretensioners, height adjustable front shoulder belts, plastic fuel tanks, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, rearview cameras and available all wheel drive.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does 35 MPH front crash tests on new vehicles. In this test, results indicate that the Chevrolet Blazer is safer than the Jeep Wrangler:
|
|
Blazer |
Wrangler |
| OVERALL STARS |
5 Stars |
4 Stars |
|
|
Driver |
|
| STARS |
5 Stars |
4 Stars |
| Neck Injury Risk |
22% |
34.1% |
| Neck Stress |
178 lbs. |
337 lbs. |
| Neck Compression |
25 lbs. |
80 lbs. |
| Leg Forces (l/r) |
104/435 lbs. |
417/461 lbs. |
|
|
Passenger |
|
| STARS |
4 Stars |
4 Stars |
| Neck Stress |
124 lbs. |
217 lbs. |
| Leg Forces (l/r) |
28/2 lbs. |
270/540 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.
A significantly tougher test than their original offset frontal crash test, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety does 40 MPH small overlap frontal offset crash tests. In this test, where only 25% of the total width of the vehicle is struck, results indicate that the Chevrolet Blazer is safer than the Wrangler 4-door:
|
|
Blazer |
Wrangler |
| Overall Evaluation |
GOOD |
MARGINAL |
| Restraints |
GOOD |
ACCEPTABLE |
| Head Neck Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Head injury index |
90 |
209 |
| Peak Head Forces |
0 G’s |
0 G’s |
| Steering Column Movement Rearward |
0 cm |
3 cm |
| Chest Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Max Chest Compression |
19 cm |
30 cm |
| Hip & Thigh Evaluation |
GOOD |
GOOD |
| Femur Force R/L |
.2/.1 kN |
3.3/.6 kN |
| Hip & Thigh Injury Risk R/L |
0%/0% |
1%/0% |
| Lower Leg Evaluation |
GOOD |
POOR |
| Tibia index R/L |
.68/.58 |
.92/.33 |
Instrumented handling tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and analysis of its dimensions indicate that the Blazer, with its four-star roll-over rating, is 11.2% to 12% less likely to roll over than the Wrangler, which received a three-star rating.

