But while catastrophic crashes in top-level skiing are not common, the injuries athletes sustain when they happen can be gruesome. Lower-body injuries, such as torn knee ligaments or broken legs, occur most frequently, yet the damage to the upper body is often the most severe. The American Bode Miller, who injured his back in a crash last March, has missed the entire World Cup season after having surgery in November to repair a herniated disk; he returned to competition Thursday in the super-G at the world championships but promptly crashed head over heels again.

According to data compiled by F.I.S., nearly 20 percent of the 726 recorded injuries over the past eight seasons of Alpine events in the World Cup series involved the head, neck, shoulders or chest. More than a quarter of those injuries made athletes miss 28 or more days of training and competition.

An effort to reduce those numbers led F.I.S. to partner with the Italian company Dainese, perhaps best known for its link to motorcycle racing, for which it has created numerous safety devices, including an airbag system that is used by top-level racers.

In 2011, Dainese, working with F.I.S., began developing an airbag that could be used in skiing. The challenges were considerable. First, there was the matter of creating a system that could consistently determine when it was needed, effectively distinguishing the difference between skiers who lost their balance but were able to recover and skiers who lost their balance and went into a dangerous tumble.

Image Dainese’s technicians use a credit-card-size electronics board to help control the functions of the airbag. Credit... Cristiano Bendinelli for The New York Times

“That’s why we call it intelligent clothing,” Vittorio Cafaggi, a manager for strategic development at Dainese, said in an interview at the company’s research and development lab in Molvena. “It isn’t enough for it to just protect you; it has to know when you need protection, too.”

To make that possible, Dainese’s technicians use gyroscopes, accelerometers and a GPS tracking device to monitor an athlete’s position, angle to the ground and speed. If a skier’s angle and speed suddenly change drastically, sending the values outside the algorithm’s normal range, the airbag inflates.