Both the Lyriq and Ariya have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The Lyriq 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 Ariya’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.
The Lyriq’s standard pretensioning seatbelts also sense rear collisions and remove slack from the seatbelts to help protect the occupants from whiplash and other injuries. The Ariya doesn’t offer a whiplash protection system.
In a Vehicle-to-Vehicle Frontal Crash Prevention 2.0 test conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), the Cadillac Lyriq achieved a “Good” rating - the highest possible - for its performance in forward collision warning and automatic braking systems, demonstrating its excellent capabilities in preventing collisions. The Nissan Ariya has not been tested.
The Cadillac Lyriq comes with a standard 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 Nissan Ariya doesn’t offer a camera washer, requiring manual cleaning.
Both the Lyriq and Ariya have Rear Cross Traffic Alert, but the Lyriq has Rear Cross Traffic Braking (automatically applies the brakes) to better prevent a collision when backing near traffic. The Ariya’s Rear Cross Traffic Alert doesn’t automatically brake.
Both the Lyriq and the Ariya 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, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, blind spot warning systems, rearview cameras, rear cross-path warning and available driver alert monitors.
The Cadillac Lyriq weighs 549 to 1515 pounds more than the Nissan Ariya. The NHTSA advises that heavier vehicles are much safer in collisions than their significantly lighter counterparts.