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Best Bet for regen braking is to have 2 static positions for ease of use and to avoid motoring an engine somewhere.
I used to help a summer camp and we had an electric narrow gauge railroad 20 passenger cart. It was an aluminum flatbed with welded on assemblies that were seats/battery shields. You had forward and reverse power but then we switched it to neutral on the way back because it was down hill the whole way.
The cart had two, I can't think of the word for them, switches you lift to activate. Each put one of the two motors into braking. Under one click you would not really gain speed down a 2% grade with 20 people and lots of climbing hardware and lots of batteries. With both down it would lurch when you activated it and kept the cart at reasonably low speed.
I always coasted to high speed and then engaged one and then the other about 1/2 mile from camp(six miles one way).
The advantage of the static was if someone who didn't know anything about driving it clicked one of those up while they were moving it disconnected the "throttle" so they couldn't short circuit the batteries or burn the motors out. We didn't think to connect the brakes to the same switch. Mistake.
Also it had a governor so if the wheels started turning fast enough it triggered a solenoid that snapped both switches active. It would not be able to be driven since the throttles were disengaged and then told us who was no longer allowed to drive.
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