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 Colorado are reminded to check the back seat if they opened the rear door before starting out. The Gladiator doesn’t offer a back seat reminder.
The Colorado’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 Gladiator doesn’t offer a lane departure warning system.
The Colorado offers an optional Surround Vision to allow the driver to see objects all around the vehicle on a screen. The Gladiator 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 Colorado 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 and moves the vehicle back into its lane. A system to reveal vehicles in the Gladiator’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the Colorado has standard Rear Cross Traffic Alert and Rear Cross Traffic Braking automatically engages the brakes to help avoid a collision. Jeep charges extra for Rear Cross Path Detection on the Gladiator and the Gladiator’s Rear Cross Path Detection does not include automatic braking.
Both the Colorado and the Gladiator 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 Colorado is safer than the Jeep Gladiator:
|
|
Colorado |
Gladiator |
|
|
Driver |
|
| STARS |
4 Stars |
4 Stars |
| HIC |
194 |
220 |
| Neck Injury Risk |
26.1% |
34.9% |
| Neck Compression |
10 lbs. |
91 lbs. |
| Leg Forces (l/r) |
150/71 lbs. |
576/707 lbs. |
New test not comparable to pre-2011 test results. More stars = Better. Lower test results = Better.

