The original crash tests carried out in the late-1930s had less to do with safety than with reducing discomfort and increasing the overall quality of the tested vehicles. During the following decades, a realization that the same praxis could be successfully implemented to improve the chances of passenger survivability and to decrease the risk of operation created a new sector within the burgeoning industry. Among the most useful tools early on was the high speed camera enabling testers to view exactly what happened during impact.

Even as the accompanying technology advances and new models for simulating the dangers of a collision develop, physical tests remain vital for providing real world data and assuaging consumer concerns, with high speed video playing an indispensable role in the process. While destructive tests such as those for frontal and side impacts and recent rollover tests are expensive in both time and money, often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, they also provide the most accurate data among crash simulations. For this reason, cameras must be held to a higher standard than those in other industries with greater flexibility in their requirements. Cameras for these tests are generally mounted in one of two places: on-board or off.