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. Turning off the engine
would lock the steering. Pulling on the handbrake would lock the rear
wheels.

I'm not sure I agree with their answer.

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

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 (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? I
thought it only locked when the key was removed - for this very reason, so
you can safely turn off the engine in the event of an emergency.

Discuss...