Is it possible to test ASSERT in ABAP Unit? ​

I would like to catch assert failures in ABAP Unit tests.

Technically it should be possible, because the ABAP Unit framework does intercept them. We get a message "[The ASSERT condition was violated.]" instead of a dump. Instead, I would like to unit test that the ASSERT fails. Unfortunately I can't find anything in the AU framework to handle it.

I could raise an exception instead of ASSERT, but I think ASSERTS have their place and it would be useful to be able to test these. Ironically, the ASSERT I was trying to test this with had an error in it and wasn't being raised at first, so my testing had real value here.