Lincoln makes Co-Pilot360 safety system standard on Nautilus

In today’s hectic driving environment, drivers need all the help they can get in avoiding distracted drivers and pedestrians. This is why the

Lincoln Nautilus

boasts the full suite of Co-Pilot360 safety features as standard equipment, something competitors sell as options.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that as many as 90 percent of collisions could be avoided if all vehicles on the road had Advanced Driver Assistance Systems like

Lincoln

Co-Pilot360. Until then, all

Nautilus

drivers will benefit from the electronic support of key features such as Pre-Collision Assist with Pedestrian Protection. Pre-Collision Assist alerts the driver if it senses a vehicle in front in the path of a collision. It will also pre-charge the brakes if the driver doesn’t react, and the system can also brake without driver input, if needed.

Other luxury carmakers offer their safety features as individual options, upgrade packages or on higher trim levels. Lincoln makes the full raft of safety technology standard equipment on every new Nautilus. It also offers optional features, like adaptive cruise control, to help relieve the driver of some of the workload on long drives as it automatically matches the speed of cars ahead using its forward radar system. Lincoln’s system can even bring the vehicle to a stop in bumper-to-bumper traffic jams and then take off again after brief stops of less than 3 seconds.

Co-Pilot360 also includes lane-keeping assist to prevent Nautilus drivers from accidentally wandering out of their lane, and a blind-spot information system that illuminates an indicator light in the mirror to warn if there’s a car lurking in the blind spot.

The rearview camera helps drivers guide the Nautilus into parking spaces, and the rear cross-traffic alert can warn of approaching cars when backing out of a space. The active park assist system goes a step further and will actually do the steering for them in both parallel and perpendicular parking. Out on the highway at night, automatic high beams keep the maximum amount of light on the road at all times, dimming themselves to avoid blinding drivers in oncoming cars.

Lincoln bests the competition

By comparison,

BMW’s

Active Driving Assist Professional system on the

X5

is optional, so not all of its drivers benefit from active cruise control with lane keeping assist and collision avoidance.

The

Cadillac XT4

and

XT5

‘s Driver Awareness Package is available optionally only on higher trim levels, and it includes forward collision alert, lane keeping assist, lane departure warning, front pedestrian braking and low-speed forward automatic braking along with automatic high-beam headlight control. Further, the Driver Assist Package is only available on the higher trim levels and only after buying the Driver Awareness Package.

Cadillac’s

Driver Assist Package adds adaptive cruise control and forward and reverse automatic braking.

Still another costly step up from there, Cadillac’s Enhanced Visibility Package adds Automatic Parking Assist. But that’s still better than the

Mercedes-Benz

GLE-class SUVs, which do not offer any kind of automatic parking feature at any price.

Blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic assist are components of the Side Assist package on the

Audi Q5

, which is standard equipment on pricier trim levels. Adaptive cruise control, traffic sign recognition and lane-keeping assist are all extra-cost options for the

Q5

. Adaptive cruise control costs extra on

Audi’s Q7

.

Exotic Italian marques such as

Alfa Romeo

and

Maserati

have joined the luxury

crossover

SUV market, but these vehicles do not include standard safety technology like Lincoln. In the case of the

Alfa Romeo Stelvio

, parking-assist sensors, blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert are all part of the added-cost Driver Assistance Static Package on all but the most track-focused and expensive

Stelvio

Quadrifoglio. And you’d need the Driver Assistance Dynamic Package on the non-Quadrifoglio-edition Stelvio to include adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning and automatic high beams. It is the same for the

Maserati Levante

, for which adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, lane departure warning, automatic brake assist and blind-spot alert are all add-on options to the car’s base price.

A report from the Boston Consulting Group tells us that crashes prevented by automatic safety systems such as forward collision warning and rear cross-traffic alert provide a value of more than $16,000 over a car’s 20-year lifespan.