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Lead acid batteries can handle a very high charge rate for a short amount of time, this has been proven in electric vehicle racing and tested by battery companies, but you don't want to do more then a 50% charge in 3 minutes and even that kind of charge shortens the battery life a great deal, you have to have good connections tho or you will melt battery posts.
If you want to recapture that energy you are going to need a bigger battery of course, so this conversation about over charging is pointless as the starting battery in my civic holds enough energy for about a mile of range, so figure at best a mile and a half of braking energy, shorten that by half or more if it's a steep hill, so to give good battery life you shouldn't work the batteries that hard, so I would say put 4 of them in for a mile of braking.
I think that getting a regenerative controller, an Etek motor and a modest size bank of batteries would be the way to go if you want to do this, just replace your alternator with the Etek motor.
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