Apple Thoughts: iPad Crashing? Fresh Install May Fix It

"We've been made aware of some ongoing issues with apps crashing constantly on iPads running iOS 5, both iPad and iPad 2 are impacted with Safari being particularly sensitive and seemingly crashing anytime javascript or a video loads and sometimes with just general web browsing."

I'm going through some of this with my iPad (original not version 2), and if it's happening on more than just Safari then you are probably better off doing a fresh install of iOS 5. This gives you a simple walkthrough on how to do this but if it continues, then it sounds like you will have to wait for the next update (iOS 5.1 is currently in Beta) to see if that solves the problem. For me, it isn't happening all that often. It is mainly when I have too many tabs open so I think that is probably the root cause.