Update: I've also managed this bug when better foliage was completely gone so I guess this bugreport is redundant.
Better foliage just seems to be the best video card testing software since it makes the crash happen so much faster. Sorry for the inconvenience. I think you can close this issue.

On areas where there's a lot of extra leaves, better foliage causes my graphics drivers to crash. The screen flashes black and drivers restart while the game crashes. This seems to happen more frequently when moving fast into densely forested areas.

The Nvidia graphics card option on better foliage does not affect this.
I tried underclocking my graphics card. The crash still happens but related visual effects are less noticeable.
Also tried lowering the distance on extra leaves but this didn't seem to do anything regarding this, maybe it happens even more than before.

Sometimes, this error pops up a bit before the crash:
https://gyazo.com/a813423ffa681f5d32251187ccaf211d

This is how the game looks a second before crashing:
https://gyazo.com/d537717c1f7f7d721df25f0feaaef1ef

Is this information helpful in solving this problem? I play a lot of demanding games and I've never had this problem. The graphics card seems to power up a lot every time a lot of leaves are on the screen as indicated by the fan noise.

I used to play this with this mod on 1.11 about a year ago with the same graphics card but I didn't have this problem.
all testing was done in a dense forest with redwood trees from Biomes o' plenty

No problem in nether with lots of rising souls.

MC 1.12.2
Forge: 14.23.1.2587
BetterFoliage-MC1.12-2.1.10
Graphics 1070 GTX Nvidia, latest drivers as of this date.
Fully updated Windows 10