As the Winter Olympics roar into life in northern Italy, athletes will be sporting state-of-the-art airbag vests that inflate during crashes, protecting speed skiers from the worst injuries. The Olympics are being held on some of the fastest slopes on earth, with skiers routinely hitting freeway speeds. One wrong turn of the ski could invite disaster, which prompted the engineering firm Dainese to create the perfect wearable airbag vest. The International Skiing Federation made airbag vests mandatory for all speed events for the 2024-2025 World Cup circuit, and now the mandate has been put in place at the Olympics as well. The airbag uses sensors trained on years of runs and GPS technology to monitor an athlete’s motion and trigger only in real crashes. Some athletes have tried to argue their way out of the mandate, suggesting that the vests slow them down, which the manufacturer denies. Airbags have existed in the sport for over a decade, and post-crash examination and research in some cases has shown that damage would have been much worse if not for the deployment of the airbags.
