How Common Are Skiing Injuries? Ski Injury Statistics

📊01 / Injury rate

How common are skiing injuries?

The best answer is a rate rather than a raw number. Millions of ski days take place every winter, so saying that thousands of people are injured tells us little unless we know how many people were exposed to the sport.

The National Ski Areas Association's fifth 10-year interval injury study used ski-patrol incident reports from U.S. ski areas. For the 2022/23 season it found an incident rate of 2.2 injuries per 1,000 skier and snowboarder visits. The study excludes medical events such as heart attacks, on-duty employee incidents and racers injured on a racecourse.

Another large study shows why the methodology matters. Researchers examined emergency-service dispatch data across Tyrol, Austria, over five winter seasons from 2017 to 2022. They identified 43,283 cases across 98.1 million skier days, producing an overall rate of 0.44 injuries per 1,000 skier days.

That is far below the U.S. ski-patrol figure, but it does not mean Austrian slopes were necessarily five times safer. The Austrian research used emergency-dispatch cases, whereas the NSAA study captures a broader group of reported on-hill incidents. Different definitions produce different rates.

🦵02 / Injury type

What are the most common skiing injuries?

The lower body dominates alpine skiing injury research. A clinical review found lower-extremity injuries represented between 43% and 77% of injuries in the studies it examined. Across its pooled table, lower-extremity injuries accounted for 52% of reported injuries.

The knee is the single most consistently reported injury site. The same review found studies placing knee injuries at roughly 27% to 41% of all alpine skiing injuries. Common knee diagnoses include ligament sprains involving the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL).

• Knee: repeatedly identified as the leading anatomical injury site in alpine skiing research.
• Shoulder: falls can produce dislocations and other shoulder injuries.
• Hand, wrist and thumb: these feature regularly in upper-limb injury datasets.
• Lower leg: fractures and other lower-leg injuries remain part of the injury burden.
• Head and neck: one major review calculated these at about 13% of reported injuries across its pooled data.

Those percentages describe injured people, not the chance that an individual skier will suffer each injury. Saying knees account for around a third of ski injuries does not mean a third of skiers injure a knee.

📉03 / Long-term trend

Are skiing injuries becoming less common?

Over the long term, the broad trend is encouraging. NSAA's U.S. study found its reported incident rate fell from 3.6 per 1,000 visits in 2010/11 to 2.2 in 2022/23 — a 39% decline.

A separate western Canadian study analysed more than 113,000 on-snow injury reports from 29 ski resorts over the decade from 2008/09 to 2017/18. It calculated an average of 2.24 injuries per 1,000 skier days and found a gradual decline across the study period.

The Tyrol study also concluded that injury incidence had fallen substantially compared with older research, reporting 0.44 emergency-dispatch injuries per 1,000 skier days over 2017–2022.

That does not mean every injury category is falling at the same rate. Knee injuries remain a major issue, and individual seasons can move in the opposite direction. Germany's long-running ASU ski-accident analysis, for example, reported a rise in medically treated skiers during 2024/25 compared with the unusually low pandemic-period seasons.

⚠️04 / Severe accidents

How common are catastrophic ski injuries?

Catastrophic injuries are a very different category from everyday ski-patrol incidents. NSAA defines them as life-altering injuries such as serious head injuries, loss of a limb, or a broken neck or back resulting in full or partial paralysis.

In the 2024/25 U.S. ski season, NSAA recorded 63 catastrophic injuries from 61.6 million skier and snowboarder visits. That is a rate of 1.02 catastrophic injuries per million visits.

For perspective, the 10-season average from 2015/16 through 2024/25 was 44 catastrophic injuries per season and 0.75 per million visits. The 2024/25 rate was therefore higher than the recent average, even though catastrophic incidents remained rare compared with the total volume of skiing and snowboarding.

The 2024/25 profile also shows why a single severe-injury number should not be treated as a normal ski-injury rate: 46 of the 63 people were male, most incidents occurred on intermediate terrain, and collisions with trees or the snow surface were highlighted as leading causes.

This page deliberately focuses on non-fatal skiing injuries. Fatal incidents are a separate statistical topic, which we cover in our skiing death statistics guide.

⛑️06 / Helmets

How common is helmet use among skiers and snowboarders?

Helmet use has changed dramatically over the last two decades. NSAA reported that the share of U.S. skiers and snowboarders wearing helmets increased from 25% in 2002/03 to a record 91% in 2024/25.

Usage among people aged 17 and under reached 96%, while the 10–14 age group reached 98%. NSAA also cites peer-reviewed research in which potentially serious head injuries declined from 4.2% of all ski injuries to 3.0% between 1995 and 2012 as helmet use rose.

A helmet is still only one part of risk management. It cannot prevent knee injuries, stop a skier losing control or make a high-speed collision harmless. Speed choice, awareness of other slope users, terrain choice and staying within your ability remain important.

🔎07 / Reading the data

Why ski injury statistics often appear to contradict each other

You can find reputable ski-injury studies reporting anything from well below one injury to several injuries per 1,000 skier days. The difference is often the definition rather than an error.

• Skier visit vs skier day: these are often used similarly, but researchers may define exposure differently.
• Patrol report vs emergency dispatch: patrol data can capture incidents that never result in an ambulance call.
• Skiers only vs skiing and snowboarding: mixed datasets should not automatically be described as skiing-only statistics.
• Any injury vs medically treated injury: requiring formal treatment produces a narrower dataset.
• Recreational vs elite skiing: professional racers have very different exposure, speeds and injury patterns.
• Per participant vs per day: someone skiing ten days creates ten skier-day exposures but remains one participant.

This is why we would not turn the 2.2-per-1,000 U.S. incident figure into a claim that an individual has a precise 0.22% chance of injury every ski day. It is a population-level incident rate, not a personal prediction.

❓08 / FAQ

Frequently asked questions about ski accident statistics

How common are skiing injuries?

NSAA's latest U.S. 10-year interval study reported 2.2 on-hill guest injury incidents per 1,000 skier and snowboarder visits in 2022/23. Other studies report different rates because they use different definitions and collection methods.

What is the most common skiing injury?

The knee is consistently the most commonly reported anatomical injury site in alpine skiing. One major review found knee injuries represented roughly 27% to 41% of injuries across the studies it examined.

Are ski injuries becoming less common?

Overall, long-term studies generally show a decline. NSAA's injury rate dropped 39% between its 2010/11 and 2022/23 interval studies, although individual injury categories and individual seasons can move differently.

How common are catastrophic ski injuries?

NSAA recorded 63 catastrophic injuries in the United States in 2024/25, equivalent to 1.02 per million skier and snowboarder visits.

What percentage of skiers wear helmets?

NSAA reported 91% helmet use among U.S. skiers and snowboarders in 2024/25, the highest level in its historical series.

Are professional ski injury rates comparable with holiday skiers?

No. Elite racing and freestyle competition involve different speeds, terrain and exposure. Professional-sport injury statistics should not be used as the expected injury rate for an ordinary recreational ski holiday.