“Thought to call 911 (like what is 911 gonna’ do for you right now?) but nobody thought to turn off the ignition?”
You can’t turn off the ignition until it is in neutral or park.
Until you get to a lower speed you cannot take the car out of drive.
The only thing you can do is to stomp on the break as hard as possible and hope you can lower the speed far enough to get the car into neutral.
After that you had better not shut off the ignition because you lose your power breakunit and probably won’t have enough breaking power to stop the car.
I have never owned a vehicle with an automatic where the engine wouldn't shut off in drive or reverse. You cannot start the vehicle without it being in park or neutral, but you can certainly shut off the engine.
It must depend on the vehicle, but I've managed to pop mine into neutral from drive at 65 mph.
You are supposed to be able to stop a car without the power brake unit, since that unit could fail during operation and isn’t redundant.
The problem with powering off (and holding down the ignition button will power it off, like a force off on your computer) is that it locks the steering. You need to put the power back into accessory to fix that, but if you have your foot on the brake turning the car on turns it on completely.
This is too rare for them to have cared so far, but I’d love to have a kill switch that turned off engine ignition but kept all other systems operational.
But your brake should always be able to overcome full acceleration. You can try this out. Hold your brake down hard, and then floor the car, and see if it moves.
Probably your emergency brake would hold your car as well, although it sometimes only applies to two of the wheels. But it’s a hard linkage, so it’s always there.