The tech behind car crash tests

If you consider yourself to be a car enthusiast than you're probably familiar with the Euro NCAP crash tests that grade a car's safety during an accident based on a very precise rating system.

But have you ever wondered what technology stands behind these tests that makes their rating system to be so trustworthy?

As you might assume, cameras are the most important pieces of equipment used on site. The better the cameras, the more accurate the result and test conclusions are.

Hence, NCAP engineers use specialized motion-recording cameras, that focus on the number of frames per second for the highest accuracy rate. While a normal video camera records a number of 60 frames per second, a NCAP camera records as many as thousands of frames per seconds.

IDT NX Series cameras are used for on-board recording with a 730 frames per second rate at a 4.0 megapixels image quality while Phantom Flex cameras are filming the crash test from outside the car. These record a maximum number of 2,570 frames per second and have a 1080 resolution. In other words, these cameras can fill the internal 32 GB memory in just 5.1 seconds.