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November 23rd, 2009 
Justin One of the worst kept secrets in the industry has been officially revealed on Voile’s site tonight. The Voile Light Rail and Voile Trax bindings. Yes, that’s right, Voile has introduced their own splitboard bindings.
Reaction upon initial view of the Trax: meh.
Reaction upon initial view of the Light Rail: meh
I guess I was hoping for more immediately (visually) obvious innovation.
First up the Trax, which is the lower end model, and outside of the milled base plate and integrated ‘Avalanche Rip Cord’ looks like any other metal base snowboard binding. They are claiming the Trax sit lower on the board than a regular binding setup, but to me it looks like it would be similar to any other metal binding setup as unless I’m looking at it wrong you’d only get a decrease in ride height if their baseplate was thinner than your current baseplate.
Voile Trax
To their credit the milled out base plates will obviously result in a weight savings, and the Avalanche Rip Cord system is something that I’ve seen a few do on their own but never seen as a factory offering. Will be interesting to play with that system and hear real-world feedback on it’s ability to release both buckles and both feet consistently. Actually it’d be interesting to hear the benefits they tout on the release system – I’ve got to believe that their lawyers will make sure Voile chooses their words properly as Americans are prone to sue (Colin in CA care to chime in with some lawyer $.02?)
Voile Trax binding, note orange 'Avalance Rip Cord'
The Light Rail looks similar to the Trax, except for the inclusion of two CNC machined aluminum rails on the underside of the baseplate instead of re-using your slider plates. It’s an interesting (yet inelegant to my eye) solution to the problem – I just prefer the clean look of the Sparks v. the the board height side view of the Light Rail. Yes, I realize that has absolutely ZERO to do with performance, just throwing it out there.
The light rails on the Voile Light Rail
Voile Light Rail ride height
One place where the Light Rail appears to immediately shine on paper is weight. Voile is claiming 4 lbs per pair of Light Rails, whereas the Spark Fuse comes in at 4.4 lbs per pair per the Spark website. What would a spandex clad superhero pay to drop .4 lbs from their bike? What if it was .4 lbs rolling weight?
All of the above is obviously based on the little bit of information available on Voile’s site, and for all I know these could be the shit and redefine the up and downhill ride of splitboarding as we know it. At the very least competition will make everyone step up their game, which is a good thing. Will be interesting to see some side-to-side comparisons on ride height, real world weight and stiffness v. the Fuse by someone with more money than I when these hit the market, which should be sometime in January 2010….which means they’ll be released about a month after their target customers have already upgraded their setups to the Spark Fuse.
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Interesting addition to the market. They don’t look as elegant as the Sparks, but who knows.
As for the rip straps and liability, as long as they include the usual disclaimer that ships with any kind of glisse equipment, they should be fine. They’d also need to spell out (in big letters) that for the release to work, you must reach down and rip the straps with your hands. For example, BD doesn’t guarantee the Avalung is going to save your life. To establish a prima facie negligence claim (or even a claim of strict liability for product liability), the plaintiff would have to adequately allege that Voile’s negligence contributed to their injury (highly unlikely), or that the product did not work in the manner advertised or was somehow defective (also unlikely). Suffice to say, I doubt they’re worried about it. There might be stupid plaintiff attorneys out there who might file a suit, but it wouldn’t get anywhere.
Not that I think the rip strap is a bad thing at all, but I would think that one would be first trying to ride out of the slide before trying to get the board off… and then by the time one tried (and failed) to out-ride the slide, one would not have enough time to rip those straps before getting buried. Lots of things to think about in a very small amount of time (out-ride, Avalung in teeth, rip bindings, swim, etc.).
Yeah, my first impression was really ‘this looks like some circa-1996 shit’, but in the end if it rides good that’s all that matters. My guess is the height is similar to the Fuse, it just LOOKS like it’s higher because it doesn’t have the full baseplate that sits flush against the board. Initial knee-jerk reaction is that the Voile binding won’t be as stiff as a result, but I’m not an engineer and realize that’s just judging it purely off looks and with no sort of metal engineering design. The modular nature of the rails could be interesting, if you break one you could just replace it as opposed to the entire binding, but I’d imagine stress to that part of the binding under normal use is the exception rather than the rule (and probably usually involve a car or something else to bend ‘em). The old slider plates would sometime wear from the pinhole, I guess if the rails are cheaper than new plates you’d save money there.
One thing I missed on their site on first glance but just noticed when looking at the prices on these bindings is the dual height climbing wires
http://www.voile-usa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=1130-56&Category_Code=SB&Product_Count=2