Most of the applications of Hobby's spline would be better served by using Euler spirals instead. These are G2 continuous and have less curvature varation (in fact, Euler spirals are solutions of the Minimum Variation Curvature problem). I think it's fair to characterize Hobby's spline as an approximation to Euler spiral splines, just less expensive to compute.
I think there's even more to be done on this topic. In particular, I think the tension should increase as angles go up, which can solve the "flipping" behavior you see with both Hobby and Euler spiral splines. This is true for the Adobe κ-curves paper (which considerably overstates the extent to which it's the basis for the "curvature" tool in Adobe Illustrator; the latter has not to my knowledge been adequately documented).
I think there's even more to be done on this topic. In particular, I think the tension should increase as angles go up, which can solve the "flipping" behavior you see with both Hobby and Euler spiral splines. This is true for the Adobe κ-curves paper (which considerably overstates the extent to which it's the basis for the "curvature" tool in Adobe Illustrator; the latter has not to my knowledge been adequately documented).