If you’re watching the Olympics, downhill skiing could rank at the top as the most dangerous sport at the games. And while those skiers are super talented, the outlandish speeds they reach no doubt puts them even more at risk for catastrophy. Now, there’s potentially a way to give these daredevils a more safe run thanks to the new Dainese D-air system.
The Italian company has developed a technology that is currently being used by some competitors in Pyeongchang to detect when a crash is coming, and subsequently inflates an airbag underneath a spandex ski suit in order to protect the skier from more serious harm and injuries.
The Dainese D-air Ski is integrated in a back plate that is placed underneath a skier’s suit. It uses 3 gyroscopes and 3 accelerometers in order to communicate with GPS an impressive 1,000 times per second in order to determine if a crash may be coming. In case of impending danger, the D-air inflates the airbag, and protecting the skier.
The complicated part about developing the system for downhill skiing is determining what exactly constitutes a crash. After all, skiers spend a lot of time in the air, not touching down on solid ground, but that’s not a crash. It’s merely part of the sport. While there isn’t a bunch of external data to support this claim, Dainese Executive Vice President Roberto Sadowsky claims that the company’s algorithm “has proven to work pretty much 100 percent.”
The Dainese D-air claims to deploy in just 45 milliseconds, and only adds around 1.7 pounds of extra weight to a skier. Already, a number of notable world-class skiers are using the Dainese D-air, including Olympian Lindsey Vonn.
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