NY wrote

This question was posed in a video reconstruction of an incident in the
US.

You were offered three choices:

- yank on the handbrake
- put the car in neutral
- turn off the ignition

The "correct" answer was to put the car in neutral.

It isnt just one of those, no reason why you cant do
both but don’t turn the ignition off. And it isnt just the
handbrake either, the normal brakes should be used too.

I'd turn the ignition off, put the car into neutral
if its an automatic or press the clutch if a manual
and use the normal brakes to stop the car while
turning towards the curb to get the car out of
the way of any following cars.

Turning off the engine would lock the steering.

No it doesn’t. You have to remove the key to lock the
steering on mine. And even if it did lock the steering,
that may still be a useful thing to do if you are going
to hit something if you don’t stop quickly.

Pulling on the handbrake would lock the rear wheels.

Not necessarily, depending on how effective they are.

And it makes more sense to use the normal brakes anyway.

I'm not sure I agree with their answer.

Yeah, its mindlessly superficial.

I had this very thing happen to me - when I was learning to drive.

But in those days the steering didn’t normally lock
when you removed the key from the ignition.

I was going up a steep hill so I was in a low gear with the engine going
quickly. When I got to the top and changed from second to third, the
engine raced but I put it down to bad clutch/accelerator coordination.
When it happened again as I changed to fourth, I realised it wasn't -
especially as the car shot forward like a scalded cat.

I realised what had happened very quickly and also knew what would happen
if I pressed the clutch or put the car into neutral, which was my first
instinct: the engine would race very quickly and if it went well over the
redline speed, it could well throw a piston which would be very bad news
if all that fast-moving metal came to rest in an instant.

So somehow I managed very calmly to turn the ignition just far enough to
kill the engine by putting it into the accessory position without turning
all the way off. Had I been travelling "at 120 mph with the engine
redlining" (as it said int he video) it might have been a *little* more
difficult to turn it just the right amount. ;-)

Don’t see why.

Am I right that the last thing you want to do is let the engine greatly
exceed its redline speed and risk it seizing up

Depends on the situation. If you are likely to run into something
if you don’t stop quickly, the engine seizing is less important.

(I'm assuming that the car is old enough not to have a rev-limiter)?

Do any steering locks actually lock the steering while the key is still
in, even in the off position?

My Hyundai doesn’t.

But the steering gets much heavier because with the
engine off, the power steering isnt working anymore.

I thought it only locked when the key was removed

That’s certainly how mine works. But I don’t know
what happens with the cars which are keyless.
Mine appears to use the physical key to control
the steering lock with a mechanical link.

- for this very reason, so you can safely turn off the engine in the event
of an emergency.

Yeah, that would be a sensible way to design it.

Discuss...

No way.