It is slate gray and rainy today in East Vancouver, the kind of day when bored commut­ers flick their wipers into high, children splash in puddles, and motorcycle riders die. In a nondescript building, a door rolls open. The hiss of rain on tarmac echoes across concrete, reaching two of the most advanced motorcycles on the planet, sitting on their stands. Even before they’ve braved the slick pavement outside, the bikes can hear the rain. They are aware.

Moments later, Dom Kwong, co-­founder of Damon, the company behind this pair of electric bikes, twists the throttle on the yellow one. The HyperSport prototype convulses with barely con­tained violence, its chain drive screaming like a chop-­saw blade, its stand wobbling with the torque. The HyperSport sounds like a weapon. Its designers call it the safest motorcycle ever made.

This story originally appeared in Volume 8 of Road & Track.

“Our goal is zero collision­ related fatalities with Damon products by 2030,” says Jay Giraud, CEO of Damon.

“Safe” and “motorcycle” are generally viewed as conflicting concepts. Riders exchange the safety of a car’s steel cage for a sense of freedom. The rewards are fraught with risk. But what if they didn’t have to be?

Taking inspiration from the driver­ assist tech­nology in many modern cars, the HyperSport is fitted with fore and aft cameras and 360 ­degree radar. Infrared sensors track tire temperature. Microphones let the bike hear when the road is wet. G-­forces and GPS location are processed. The bike knows where it is and what it’s doing.