Lots to think about here!
@fgor, you can guess why I ask. If you lose a ski almost every time you fall, that strengthens my concerns. I sense you think falling with a ski attached is very likely to twist your knee. I get that. But losing a ski when your boot should stay attached can cause you to fall in the first place.
Yes, losing a ski can help protect knees. But what bindings are primarily designed to do is stop you from breaking your lower leg above the cuff, not protect the knees from twisting damage. The other thing they are supposed to do is keep your skis on your feet as your skis experience unexpected forces so you don't fall when you could more safely stay upright.
Please do think about this, and read up about bindings over your green season. You might look at "knee-bindings" that have been designed to protect knees as well as the lower leg.
Personal story:
When I first learned as an adult to ski, I fell a lot. I was adventurous and willing to experiment with movement patterns, as I sense you are. I embraced the saying "no pain no gain" or "if you're not falling you're not learning."
Clumsy falls were my thing. My skis usually stayed on, and I learned to lift them in the air as I went down to keep the twisting at a minimum. ...
I've become a lot more adventurous this past season, but I didn't really start being adventurous or falling much until part-way or mid-way into the season, after I'd had a few lessons and had gained some confidence in my ability to turn. Part of what keeps me confident and largely not afraid of falling is the knowledge that typically one of my skis will pop off when I fall. This sort of lets me know that my bindings are acting correctly. I might fall once every 1-2 ski days.
Occasionally multiple times in a day, if the snow conditions are sticky or powder. I can't imagine being able to lift my skis in the air as I fall - generally when I fall, I tumble, often because I've caught an edge weirdly, so there's no real scope to know where I am in the air and keep my skis off the ground!
My understanding of knee bindings (from looking them up multiple times over the past 12 months) is that they are designed to protect against a specific kind of backward twisting fall which current bindings do little to mitigate. Unfortunately I've also read far too many contentious and highly negative things about the binding, not to mention they're not available here anyway (would anyone be able to mount them even if I did import them?)! Not sure if the binding is still being developed and improved. However a binding that releases in another dimension still has the same DIN issues as any other binding and if I had them, it wouldn't change how I determine my DIN setting.
Actually it would be interesting to see an up-to-date thread about the binding, are there any Divas who ski the kneebinding?
For those who get to ski in deep powder, that's another factor.
The only time I've requested a slightly higher DIN setting was when I rented powder skis for 30 inches of fresh snow at Alta. I popped out twice for no real reason during the morning. Once I was on a flat connector trail but decided to get out of the straight tracks I was following. Big mistake! Although my ski was just behind me and easy to retrieve just by pulling on the powder cord, it still took a major effort to get it back on. Popped out again on the next run making a turn on that wasn't hard at all in soft bumps on a steep and narrow trail. At lunch time I changed skis (wider) and signed off on upping the DIN by a bit. Moral is that pre-release in deep powder is to be avoided.
Been a while since there was a discussion of DIN settings.
https://www.theskidiva.com/forums/index.php?threads/when-to-bump-up-the-din.11563/
https://www.theskidiva.com/forums/index.php?threads/help-me-understand-binding-din-settings.24850/
I can't imagine skiing 30 inches of fresh!! Amazing!!
I will comment that if I were to turn up my bindings, I'd turn them down again for powder days. Aside from this dumb shoulder thing, my only ski injury has been a late release when I got my skis completely stuck in a tip dive on my second ever powder day, and my bindings released late (yes, at 4.5 DIN - I wasn't going overly fast). I sprained my LCL as a result and hated powder for the rest of the season. That was last year. I'm still a bit scared of powder to this day for this reason.
That was on my black pearl 88s. I tip dive on those all the time in powder and release a lot. On the other hand I've
never had a ski release in powder or chop on my Pandora 104s. This makes me think that either the higher binding elasticity has a part to play (pivot12 on the pandoras vs nx12 on the BP88), or my releases were justified on the BP88 because I was genuinely getting my ski stuck because I am bad at skiing powder, especially on narrower skis. I'm inclined to think mostly the latter.
I feel like I get conflicting advice every time I talk about DIN settings with anyone. I'm still not really convinced one way or the other. I still genuinely think that it's likely that most if not all of my ski releases were justified. I've had quite a few falls on piste where I was trying to do very quick turns, got too much on my inside ski, and felt my skis start to go in different directions extremely quickly before falling/one popping off. I wouldn't consider this a pre release and was perfectly happy to lose a ski every time. I also ski slower than most people on the mountain so I don't feel that I am a true type II skier, given that most skiers probably fall into that type II category. Maybe type 1.5 skier? This would justify a 0.5 DIN increase. I might consider that next season (but not first thing as I'll have forgotten how to ski in another 7-8 months
)
I don't know. DINs are tricky, it would be so much easier if I just had obvious pre releases