Can a mechanical binding protect the knee?

Recently, a paper was presented at the International Society for Skiing Safety (ISSS) during its last congress in Austria.

From what I have been able to learn, it stated that ACL ruptures were, by far, the number one injury in skiing while MCL ruptures came in second. This said, the paper stated that the form of lateral heel release featured by the “KneeBinding” cannot mitigate ACL ruptures.

As I have always suspected, this finding makes reasonable sense to me. Unless there is a sensor placed on the ligament to measure the stress applied during any kind of ski maneuver, there is no way for a mechanical ski binding to read and interpret what happens between the lower and the upper leg.

For the most part, traditional, mechanical bindings work fine to read what happens to the lower leg, but can't arbiter what goes in the middle of the leg.

The “phantom foot” theory advanced by Robert Johnson and Carl Ettlinger has always appeared to me as a “stretch” and unless we're able to measure what goes on inside a skier's knee when it's under stress, we won't be able to protect that critical joint.

Just my two cent...