Could Regenerative Braking be a Hazard to Riders?
upstart writes:
A lack of brake lights could put us in danger:
One feature of electric vehicles we hear a lot about is regenerative braking. Normally, the battery sends electrical power to the motor, turns the wheels, and sends you down the road. Regenerative braking effectively puts this system into reverse, harnessing the rotation of your wheels to turn the motor into a generator, sending power back to the battery and recharging it. Anyone who's ridden a bicycle with a small generator to power the lights has experienced how much extra drag even a couple of light bulbs can put on the drive system. It's far from a perpetual motion machine, but any energy an EV can recover and put back into the battery to extend its range is a benefit.
However, this presents another problem. Since regenerative braking does not use the vehicle's standard braking system, the brake lights don't need to be turned on, despite the significant amount of deceleration regenerative braking can provide. This came to light in a video by Technology Connections that demonstrated this issue on his Hyundai Ioniq 5, which could use regenerative braking to aggressively slow almost to a stop before turning on its brake lights. While the American Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards do not require EVs to light up the brake lights under regenerative braking, they explicitly do not prohibit it, either.
[...] Electric motorcycles are not nearly as common as electric cars at this point, but someday they may be. Their capabilities are impressive, their range is improving, and charging infrastructure will only get better. Like their four-wheeled cousins, electric motorcycles also use regenerative braking, which opens us up to being on the receiving end of a crash by an inattentive driver who didn't notice we were slowing down because our brake lights weren't on.
[...] Until or unless such a change is made, we, as riders, can make a small change in our behavior to ensure our safety when using heavy regenerative braking. It may not be necessary for braking purposes, but a light tap or drag on either brake will manually turn on the brake light, letting anyone behind us know we are slowing down. This is likely the preferred riding technique anyway, but now has an additional safety aspect from the lighting and visibility perspective.
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