I did something horrible to my car tonight! As I was driving on the freeway in Los Angeles, traffic opened up suddenly and I decided to mess around with my IS350 by pushing it. I switched over to the shifters and started downshifting to 3rd from 6th to launch the car. At the time, I was driving around 75. Immediately I redlined, going to 80 and decided to switch over to automatic to let the car shift itself. But then as I shifted over to the right, I guess the angle of my hand and the force of the shift, I accidently shifted the handle all the way to PARK!!! I didnt even know this was possible. My RPM immediately went down slowly and so did my speed! I was so frantic that it took me 4-5 seconds to really know how to fix it. I stepped on the brakes and then shifted back down to drive. What did I do to my baby?!! Did I mess up anything? The transmission maybe?? Please help. What should I do? Has this ever happened to anybody before?! Why would Lexus even allow you to be able to shift to PARK while driving. That has to be damaging to your car. Please comment. Thank you in advance!

 

uh ohhh... did anything happen after you did this?

 

ive wondered the same thing. what happens if your driving and you throw the car into PARK?

 

Im gonna say, note im not an expert. But id say lexus might have some kind of protecion for this. the car shouldnt lock into park at such speeds. I did it on a 96 tahoe one time and nothing happened. so I wouldnt worry.
Id say worst case scenario would be the PARK messed up. which as far as i know doesnt have to do with the tranny.
good luck

 

you were able to get home safely. that is good news...

 

I remember mythbusters did something about putting a car in park and nothing happened i believe. you should be fine.

 

your all good ...I think someone posted gear/speed charts and unless you were doing 140 in 6th and slammed it into 1st your fine. I have dropped down from auto(6th gear) to manual(4thgear) a couple times to pass.

 

I did get home safe...thank you for your concern guys but I am worry the car did not. I'm sure there's some kind of protection for this type of accident but why would a car company allow somebody to even do this by accident. WHat happens if you are cruising and you are resting your hand on the shift know and suddenly had to break really hard. Wouldnt the sudden jerk be enough force to make you accidenly shift the car into PARK by accident. I mean it isn't hard to do at all. How can you even skip Reverse and jump all the way to Park. This must have killed my tranny and/or gear box if anything. I am hoping this will not come back to haunt me in a few years when I hit 75,000+ miles! Man this blows!

 

I dotn remember exactly, but i think i remeber a post where CL member combfilter drives his car a certain speed and then shoves it into park to in order to activate the rear view camera while the car is still moving forward. This was a long time ago so i dont remember details,

how this relates to you? whle i dont think he was 75 miles an hour, i highly doubt u did any damage to your car/ tranmission. While this manuver should severly damage any transmissition im sure lexus put some sort of safety on the car for those situation. Again i dont know this for a fact, but im just sayin....

 

6th to 4th gear...I do all the time. But 6th to PARK...man....

 

He shifted it into reverse, iv done this too.
But nothing happened, its protected. The car just went into neutral.

 

I'm almost certain the tranny automatically locks out any gear other than the D while the car is in motion. It wouldn't make sense if they just locked it out when you put it in reverse. Lexus is much smarter than that also I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that Lexus has a different ECU for the transmission.

 

Yeah there's a safety lock out on the transmission. If there wasn't you would know it.

 

Wow..I didn't even know this was possible.

If anything you hurt the park pawl mechanism within the transmission..nothing detrimental obviously considering your car is still operative

 

I believe Javy told us before that nothing happens, Lexus do have protection for this kind of situation.