Going downhill fast

When skier Lindsey Vonn crashed on her Olympic downhill run, one safety measure was made evident in the footage of the accident. Her ski suit was puffed up around her chest, showing her airbag vest had inflated sometime during the calamity.

This year’s winter Olympics are the first in which downhill skiers have been required to wear these personal safety devices. In the works since 2011, airbag vests are worn under ski suits and are deployed when a complex algorithm determines that a fall (and not just the wild changes in acceleration that occur during a run) is occurring.

The International Ski and Snowbard Federation (FIS) made airbags mandatory in World Cup and Olympic competition for high speed events like downhill after two Italian ski racers died from injuries during training within the span of a year in 2024/2025. Their ruling was made as a part of a larger investigation into skiing safety, with the goal of making an inherently risky sport as safe as possible.

Ski racing almost inevitably comes with injury. High speeds, rapid directional changes, slippery surfaces, sharp skis, and humans being awkward sacks of meat and bones that have no business going that fast downhill, mean that falls can be disastrous. Some of the most common injuries include joint, limb, head, and spinal injuries.

Airbags are designed to mitigate serious upper body injuries but have not always been popular among skiers. When they were first introduced, high profile skiers including Vonn expressed concerns and doubts about the efficacy of the devices, the practicality of traveling with them (such as through airports where the air canisters can be flagged by security), and costs for replacement (making skiers more hesitant to use them during training runs, arguably the most important time to use them). However, many adopted using the airbags prior to the FIS ruling, including Vonn who expressed that she was glad to have worn hers during a 2019 crash.

Cut resistant undergarment in suits are another safety measure being used by many in skiing – sharp skis mean that deep cut injuries are also common during mishaps. Skier and now manufacturer Victor Wiacek was inspired to create a line of cut resistant gear after being cut by skis seriously enough to require a torniquet on the slopes. Ski racer Breezy Johnson credits such a garment from preventing a serious injury after a collision with another skier – the ski sliced through her clothing but stopped at the cut resistant layer, leaving her with just a bruise.

Another innovation in the work is releasable bindings to prevent leg injuries during falls. Vonn is still in hospital having undergone multiple surgeries after her crash for a very complex leg fracture – something commentators have wondered could have been helped if her skis had been made to somehow come off, decreasing the force on her leg. Releasable bindings are an even more complicated problem to solve, but one that manufacturers are looking at using the same algorithm that triggers the airbag as a starting point.

Protective equipment won’t necessarily prevent all injury – in 2015 Matthias Mayer broke two vertebrae during a world cup run despite is airbag inflating. A retrospective study in the European journal of trauma and emergency surgery focusing on patients admitted to a Level 1 trauma centre in the Bern University Hospital found that in ski injuries serious enough to warrant that level of treatment, back protection of any kind had a limited impact on the extent or treatment of the injury. That’s not to say that protection didn’t prevent injury at all (because the study didn’t look at skiers who wore back protection and escaped injury), but that there may be a point at which the forces and speeds at play in the worst crashes may overwhelm most safety devices to some extent.

That’s why implementing changes in things like course design are also being explored by researchers by mapping courses and identifying riskier turns and banks through computer modelling. This could allow for measures like more effective safety fencing placement and wider buffer zones. Research into the types of acceleration and forces at play when skiing around gates could also inform how courses are set up. Courses can be designed to slow skiers down, preventing serious crashes in the first place.

People watch and participate in high speed sports for the excitement and challenge inherent in them. World class skiers seem to defy what physics should allow humans to do. Using technology to enhance safety can also enhance our enjoyment of these sports. At some point physics will win, but when it does, we’d like to see our skiers get back up in one piece and try again.

Learn more

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Alpine Skiing Airbags Postponed 2014. Eric Willemsen (Claims Journal) Last accessed 2026/02/25

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