Extra shifter step has got to go, but Ford doesn't get it

A respected fellow auto scribe, having seen my recent video about how to stop a runaway car, pointed to something that I've harped on about in many a review of Ford cars with automatic transmissions.

The key point in that clip is to disconnect the car's driving wheels from the engine by getting the car into Neutral as quickly as possible.

For an automatic transmission, that means slamming the shift lever from D into N as fast as you can.

Marc Lachapelle recalled my rants about Ford's idiotic and dangerous transmission shift linkage design, which requires you to depress the thumb button before the lever can be slid from Drive into Neutral.

The drawbacks of this design should be obvious, especially now that the prevention of a crash due to unintended acceleration is front-and-centre in the news.

The main problem is: when you're in full-panic mode, you hardly need to be worried about having to find and operate that thumb button.

All it should take is a quick slap of that lever into Neutral so you can then focus on the not-inconsiderable task of finding a safe place to park your car, with its now-screaming engine.

An incipient skid on slippery roads calls for exactly the same response.

A corollary problem is that if you do have to work that thumb button while in a panic, it would be all too easy to slap the lever too far forward (or counter-clockwise if it's a steering column stalk) all the way into Reverse or Park.

Depending on the design of the transmission, this could result in the drive wheels locking up solid, which could very well put your car into a spin; terminal damage to your transmission; or probably both.

Why, oh why, does Ford do it this way?

Land Rover used to, and I think still does in some models. Their excuse is that while off-roading you don't want to bang the lever accidentally with your knee into Neutral because the subsequent loss of traction might cause a problem during severe boonie-bashing.

Fair enough, but not likely to be a concern in your Taurus or Focus.

Volvo, still if not for long a subsidiary of Ford, does this in most of its models too. No off-road (not on purpose, anyway) excuse here, and for a company with an otherwise well-deserved reputation for safety, it is simply beyond comprehension.

I once asked a Ford transmission engineer why Ford did it this way. His response was, "We do?"

Apparently, he only designs the transmission innards, and had never noticed how the shifter works.

So, which department within Ford does design the shift linkage this way? And why?

Who makes the decision to be out of step with the rest of the entire automotive world, and to leave this dangerous design in place?

If I can't get the engineers excited about it, maybe Ford's liability lawyers will stir things up.

Ford has recently had a brake-related recall issue for the Fusion Hybrid; they surely will survive that.

But they probably could not survive a recall that would require them to fix just about every floor-shift automatic car they have built for the past 25 years or so.

There is no reason for Ford to do it this way; there are very good reasons for Ford not to do it this way.

It's too late for existing cars, but not for future cars.

What's keeping them?