Skiing is closer to sports with "transport as an equipment" like gokarting, car racing, surfing, skydiving, jetskiing, etc.
It's farther from the spectrum of sports that "toss a 'ball' around" like hockey, basketball, football, lacrosse, baseball, etc.
As you can see, the transport equipped sports carry more danger because of the speeds and acceleration that can be achieved.
The ball sports max out at human running speed.
More speed and acceleration is more dangerous but can be mitigated with better equipment, in addition to discipline.
Transport as an equipment also requires a higher level of equipment once a skill is unlocked.
For example, in car racing, once you unlock the skill of heel toe, you become faster to a degree and need a race car instead of a regular car. A race car is faster in a straight or drift better or whatever with your new found heel toe skill than a regular car.
In skiing, once you unlock carving or angulating properly in bumps or barreling down steeps, you become faster than skidders and need a more stable ski/steerable ski/tighter boots, etc and to tune your equipment to be able to control the speed or be more stable in bumps or controllable in steeps, etc.
From a recreation point of view, once a skill is unlocked with the transport driven sports, it's hard to dial it back. It's probably due to adrenaline production. Adrenaline is like a drug. When you reach a threshold in your system, it's hard to "entertain yourself" by dialling back the thing that gives you adrenaline.
With ball sports, the adrenaline production is not that pronounced, so there are days where you just take it easy playing basketball at the Y and you feel satisfied (because you got a good exercise, in your mind, even though you didn't score 30 points or sunk the game winning shot or whatever).
This is why I think there's no difference between week a year carvers, for example, and 100 days a year carvers. Every ski day, they strive for the same adrenaline threshold. They need that faster G turn or higher speed to get the adrenaline up. In doing so, the week a year carver must use the same high end ski equipment as a 100 days a year carver.
Same with a car racer who knows how to heel toe and all that racing shit. A car racer who only does track day once a month or even every few months can benefit from the same higher end race car than one who's doing track day every weekend.
