Heavier REGEN as a safety feature?

I’ve never driven a car with heavier REGEN than the Clarity, but I know such exist, so as to provide almost one-pedal driving.

Let me tell you what just happened...

We were driving from our E TN home to our N GA digs. It was quite dark as we drove along the Ocoee river, maybe 45-50 mph, up a slight grade approaching Ducktown, TN. A quite large deer jumped right to left, directly into our path. I had split-second, just enough time to maybe get my foot off the throttle and headed towards the brake, twitched the steering wheel slightly right and missed him by no more than a foot. Whew!

First off, the car did not brake itself. I think the deer was just too close. But I was in SPORT mode with 4 chevrons of REGEN*, so I maybe got a smidgin of deceleration from that. But heavier REGEN might have been more beneficial - any slight reduction is speed/inertia helps limit damage and/or injury.

What do you think? Might heavier REGEN enhance safety in emergencies?


*SPORT with Max REGEN is my SOP.

 

Sorry. Could you maybe restate that?

 

Yeah, I had a little trouble parsing it.

I vaguely recall a Mythbusters where the tested whether hitting something faster is ever a benefit. Pretty sure the answer was “no”. I can’t find a link right now, but I did find this:



OUCH! “Our” deer was large enough to have come through the windshield, but the timing was such that we would have clipped him with out left front fender. We were both surprised there was no impact - it was that close.

 

I think I get the physics.

As a flight instructor, I often have to point out the relation of speed and kinetic energy. Mainly to get the point across that with landings, slower is better.

To make that point it’s important to know that kinetic energy increases as the square of a speed increase. Our brains tend to think linearly. For example a 100 mph hurricane sounds twice as powerful as a 50 mph tropical storm. In fact, it carries four times the punch.

To show this effect when landing, I came up with a tiny Excel spreadsheet:



Back on point, heavier REGEN in the split-second it takes to get your foot on the brake would only make a small difference in impact velocity, but that even that small difference might help in reducing damage and injury.

 

I try to land at the slowest possible speed, which should normally be at or near the plane’s stall speed in any given configuration. The point of my example was that if a pilot landed at 46kias when they could have further slowed to 41kias before touchdown, they’d be carrying 26% more kinetic energy to be dissipated somehow in the event of a mishap. Same thing would apply to hitting a deer - or a moose! - at 46 mph rather than 41 mph.

As far as approach goes, the rule-of-thumb is to approach at 1.3 x the stall speed, or 1.2 for a short field. That gives a 30% or 20% margin above the stall for safety. If gusty, you further add 1/2 of the gust velocity.

 

Modified Ercoupe?

 

I would not expect it to be - just maybe help a tiny bit more in the short but measurable time delay it takes to get your foot over to the brake pedal. And anything even borderline aggressive would definitely need to trigger the brake lights using some sort of g-measuring sensor, as Tek_Freek suggested.