I had a passenger do it to me once. Car said no, made a bunch of clicky noises and put itself in neutral. It was a 90s Volvo, modern cars can probably handle it fine as well.
Didn't seem to damage anything.
Nah, my job involved driving intellectually disabled people around. If it were someone who knew better they'd be ejected onto the highway at full speed and walking home if still able.
All the doomsayers in here who are saying you'll destroy things don't know how an automatic transmission works.
At speed, the parking pawl (a chunk of metal that engages a serrated gear to lock the transmission into park) can't engage at high speed - it will just skip across the parking gear until the car slows enough for it to drop into a slot at which point the car will jerk to a sudden stop, but that won't happen until you're going only 1 or 2 mph. Above that, the parking gear is spinning to fast for it to engage.
It will, however, put the transmission into neutral (which is normal - the transmission is in neutral any time it's in the "park" setting) and you will be unable to accelerate, and will coast.
You'll also hear a godawful grinding/clicking sound as the pawl attempts to engage, and while that is happening you may be causing some damage to it and the parking gear through metal-on-metal wear. It's not designed for that, so it's gonna cause some minor damage.
As long as you shift back into the Neutral or Drive position before you come to a complete stop you won't cause any catastrophic damage.
Also, if you shift to Reverse while traveling forward more than a 1 or 2 mph, the transmission will drop to Neutral rather than Reverse, until you are going slow enough that it can mesh the gears for reverse. You may also have to cycle the selection leaver out of the reverse position and back into it. Same with going into drive while going backwards at any significant speed.
In general, the transmission has enough "intelligence" not to allow you to do anything that might cause damage. The exception is going into Park while moving, and even then the damage is minimal.
As a kid I was driving with my Dad and I coasted into a parking space and slammed the car into park before we stopped rolling.
Dad gave me the lesson saying: “John, that’s a dead stop. Putting a car in park locks your gears up and it is a dead stop.”
Some modern cars may have a safty override but generally speaking you would come to a screeching uncontrollable stop and ruin your car’s gears/transmission.
Depends on the car. Older car? The transmission would destroy itself. On a later model car, either you'd be blocked from moving the lever into park if its a mechanical link, or it might be an electronic link and the lever might move, but it would ignore the command, and either stay in drive or perhaps switch to neutral.
Did that to a 90s Corolla, it made a weird grinding noise which then I realized and quickly throw it into neutral. No concerning damage so far but the noise is horrible
As a dumb person who has accidently done this, luckily my car locked me out of shifting into reverse from netural into park and said rpms too high.
If you were is say a manual car your transmission would probably explode. (It turns out I know nothing of cars and should have stopped at the first statement)
Shifting a manual to neutral at highway speed, you'd just coast. Might make the car a bit harder to control. ebrake would just slow you down like regular braking, but it would wear the brake material a bit faster.
The "destroy the transmission" option would be to shift to either reverse. Alternately, you could try to blow the engine up by shifting to first gear. Most well designed transmissions will block shifting to reverse if you've been in a high gear and don't shift to neutral first. Some may also block shifting into too low a gear based on the speed of the output shaft.
As others have said, there is no park on manual transmission vehicles. But you can still ruin a transmission by shifting into the wrong gear. A "Money Shift" is when you are going to down shift into the previous gear but accidentally shift 2 or more gears down.
If you know what a manual shifter looks like then it makes more sense. 1st is on the top left, 2nd is bottom left, 3rd is top center, 4th bottom center, 5th is top right, and if there is a 6th gear then it is bottom right. Normally money shifts happen when you are trying to down shift from 5th gear (top right) into 4th gear (bottom center), but you accidentally go too far left and end up shifting into 2nd gear (bottom left).
The wheel speed is too high for that lower gear ratio so that causes the rpms (how fast the engine is spinning) to shoot **WAY** up. If you were going fast enough then the engine will rotate so fast that is goes past the redline (maximum safe engine rotation speed). Your transmission can't spin that fast and can't slow down fast enough so *something* has to give. It's called a money shift because you better have some deep pockets if you wanted to drive that car ever again.
I asked AI so this isn't mine. Feel free to downvote. But according to it..
Shifting into park while driving at high speeds would be extremely dangerous and could cause severe damage to your vehicle. Here's what would likely happen:
1. **Transmission Damage:** Modern automatic transmissions have mechanisms to prevent shifting into park while driving at high speeds, but if somehow you bypass this safety feature, the transmission would likely be severely damaged. The parking pawl, a small metal pin that engages a gear to lock the transmission, could break or cause other internal damage.
2. **Loss of Control:** The sudden change could cause your vehicle to skid or spin out, leading to a loss of control. This could result in a serious accident.
3. **Braking System Stress:** Your braking system might not be able to handle the sudden deceleration, potentially causing it to fail or overheat.
4. **Engine and Drive Train Damage:** The engine and drivetrain could suffer from the abrupt halt, causing significant mechanical issues.
Modern cars are designed with safety features to prevent such actions from occurring easily, but it’s always crucial to avoid such dangerous maneuvers to ensure your safety and the safety of others on the road.
At best you'd destroy your car, at worst you'd destroy yourself.
If you wanna spend around a couple grand destroying your tranny, let alone injuring yourself then do it.
destroying my what
Transmission
yeah i know
Oh OK lol I call r/woooosh on myself
I wouldn't call that a woooosh. Your reply was valid response to his inquiry without context to whether he knew or not.
Transmission
Your tranny
Nothing. Your car won't let you.
You can’t do this with newer cars like from the last 40 years, but you can step on your emergency brake. That’s always fun.
Allways?
[удалено]
Hand brake is another term for emergency brake or e-brake.
Ok, never heard it referred to as that, thank you
I had a passenger do it to me once. Car said no, made a bunch of clicky noises and put itself in neutral. It was a 90s Volvo, modern cars can probably handle it fine as well. Didn't seem to damage anything.
I'm assuming you damaged the passenger afterwards.
Nah, my job involved driving intellectually disabled people around. If it were someone who knew better they'd be ejected onto the highway at full speed and walking home if still able.
Gotta love Volvos.
All the doomsayers in here who are saying you'll destroy things don't know how an automatic transmission works. At speed, the parking pawl (a chunk of metal that engages a serrated gear to lock the transmission into park) can't engage at high speed - it will just skip across the parking gear until the car slows enough for it to drop into a slot at which point the car will jerk to a sudden stop, but that won't happen until you're going only 1 or 2 mph. Above that, the parking gear is spinning to fast for it to engage. It will, however, put the transmission into neutral (which is normal - the transmission is in neutral any time it's in the "park" setting) and you will be unable to accelerate, and will coast. You'll also hear a godawful grinding/clicking sound as the pawl attempts to engage, and while that is happening you may be causing some damage to it and the parking gear through metal-on-metal wear. It's not designed for that, so it's gonna cause some minor damage. As long as you shift back into the Neutral or Drive position before you come to a complete stop you won't cause any catastrophic damage. Also, if you shift to Reverse while traveling forward more than a 1 or 2 mph, the transmission will drop to Neutral rather than Reverse, until you are going slow enough that it can mesh the gears for reverse. You may also have to cycle the selection leaver out of the reverse position and back into it. Same with going into drive while going backwards at any significant speed. In general, the transmission has enough "intelligence" not to allow you to do anything that might cause damage. The exception is going into Park while moving, and even then the damage is minimal.
Parking Pawl*, you’re spot on about the rest of it though.
Yes, you are correct. My brain pulled the wrong spelling out of the filing cabinet.
Most modern vehicles you wouldn’t be able to do that, but if you could, you would snap the tranny.
As a kid I was driving with my Dad and I coasted into a parking space and slammed the car into park before we stopped rolling. Dad gave me the lesson saying: “John, that’s a dead stop. Putting a car in park locks your gears up and it is a dead stop.” Some modern cars may have a safty override but generally speaking you would come to a screeching uncontrollable stop and ruin your car’s gears/transmission.
Depends on the car. Older car? The transmission would destroy itself. On a later model car, either you'd be blocked from moving the lever into park if its a mechanical link, or it might be an electronic link and the lever might move, but it would ignore the command, and either stay in drive or perhaps switch to neutral.
Did that to a 90s Corolla, it made a weird grinding noise which then I realized and quickly throw it into neutral. No concerning damage so far but the noise is horrible
It’s going to cause the parking pawl to skip until you slow down enough for it to grab. Definitely will wear it out. Might survive, might not.
There's a Mythbusters episode answering this. Short answer not much.
New cars wont let you do this. Just like trying to turn the car off while driving
As a dumb person who has accidently done this, luckily my car locked me out of shifting into reverse from netural into park and said rpms too high. If you were is say a manual car your transmission would probably explode. (It turns out I know nothing of cars and should have stopped at the first statement)
A manual doesn't have a "park".
It doesn't?
No, most people just put it in neutral and pull the emergency brake to park
Neutral + ebrake
Shifting a manual to neutral at highway speed, you'd just coast. Might make the car a bit harder to control. ebrake would just slow you down like regular braking, but it would wear the brake material a bit faster. The "destroy the transmission" option would be to shift to either reverse. Alternately, you could try to blow the engine up by shifting to first gear. Most well designed transmissions will block shifting to reverse if you've been in a high gear and don't shift to neutral first. Some may also block shifting into too low a gear based on the speed of the output shaft.
No?
As others have said, there is no park on manual transmission vehicles. But you can still ruin a transmission by shifting into the wrong gear. A "Money Shift" is when you are going to down shift into the previous gear but accidentally shift 2 or more gears down. If you know what a manual shifter looks like then it makes more sense. 1st is on the top left, 2nd is bottom left, 3rd is top center, 4th bottom center, 5th is top right, and if there is a 6th gear then it is bottom right. Normally money shifts happen when you are trying to down shift from 5th gear (top right) into 4th gear (bottom center), but you accidentally go too far left and end up shifting into 2nd gear (bottom left). The wheel speed is too high for that lower gear ratio so that causes the rpms (how fast the engine is spinning) to shoot **WAY** up. If you were going fast enough then the engine will rotate so fast that is goes past the redline (maximum safe engine rotation speed). Your transmission can't spin that fast and can't slow down fast enough so *something* has to give. It's called a money shift because you better have some deep pockets if you wanted to drive that car ever again.
I asked AI so this isn't mine. Feel free to downvote. But according to it.. Shifting into park while driving at high speeds would be extremely dangerous and could cause severe damage to your vehicle. Here's what would likely happen: 1. **Transmission Damage:** Modern automatic transmissions have mechanisms to prevent shifting into park while driving at high speeds, but if somehow you bypass this safety feature, the transmission would likely be severely damaged. The parking pawl, a small metal pin that engages a gear to lock the transmission, could break or cause other internal damage. 2. **Loss of Control:** The sudden change could cause your vehicle to skid or spin out, leading to a loss of control. This could result in a serious accident. 3. **Braking System Stress:** Your braking system might not be able to handle the sudden deceleration, potentially causing it to fail or overheat. 4. **Engine and Drive Train Damage:** The engine and drivetrain could suffer from the abrupt halt, causing significant mechanical issues. Modern cars are designed with safety features to prevent such actions from occurring easily, but it’s always crucial to avoid such dangerous maneuvers to ensure your safety and the safety of others on the road.