A crash test is also known as a destruction test. A piece of equipment or machinery such as an automobile is subjected to extreme conditions in order to determine the conditions under which it will fail. Often crash test dummies representing humans are placed into the vehicle seats to determine whether or not a human in the crash would have been seriously injured or killed.
Crash tests are conducted under rigorous scientific and safety standards. Each crash test is very expensive so the maximum amount of data must be extracted from each test.
One organization that conducts crash tests is Consumers Union for the magazine Consumer Reports.
See also: test
