You were saying ...
I hope I am never in that situation, but unless you are on an open freeway, I can't imagine their is much time to think. My first "reptilian" reaction would be to stomp on the breaks and after a few neurons get a chance to click, I'd do my best to throw the damn thing into neutral.
There was a time that I got my car out of the shop, just had a brake job and had driven about ten miles and everything seemed okay, until I came up on a line of cars, waiting at a red light and I did a very normal thing and stepped on my brakes to come to a stop behind the line of cars.
Except, this time when I stepped on the brakes, I heard a "pop" and the brakes immediately went flat to the floor and I didn't slow down a bit. The light was still red, the line of cars was coming up fast and I reacted (fortunately) just as fast and pulled the handbrake on the car.
It didn't stop as fast as the regular brakes would and I could tell I was still going to hit the rear-most car, until the moment when I saw the light just turned green and the line of cars started moving slowly forward. There was enough movement that I finally stopped without hitting anyone... whew!
I was sweating it there for a few seconds.
That was a stick-shift, four on the floor, a sports car and a handbrake in the middle, between the seats. So, it all worked out for me in that case... :-)
The Lord was on my side that day. Down shifting and emergency brakes slowed me some, but not enough to keep me from blowing right through the light.
Seriously, when stuff happens, it's not like were sitting he posting (with spell check) and can pontificate. Stuff happens damn fast and even quick reaction sometimes are not enough to save your butt.
Maybe I need to find another St. Christopher statue for my dashboard. :~))