Yes he should have dropped it into low and killed the ignition but the result would have been the same. It wouldn't have mattered what kind of downshifting, ignition killing, neutral or reverse engaging he would have done. In the short time and distance from when he realized that the brakes were not going to work by pumping them and he realized that the left turn lane became blocked, until the time they crashed, he might have been able to scrub off 1 or 2 miles an hour. The crash was inevitable at that point. The whole key was that he should not have been riding the brakes to control the speed when the throttle was stuck. Especially after they smelt the brakes burning. He should have pulled over and got the throttle fixed. Or he should have popped it into neutral occasionally as they were trying to limp back to the shop to control the speed. I listened to the analysis and q and a session of it by them on YouTube on my way home from work. I had to turn YouTube up to 1.5 times speed to make it tolerable. But anyway one thing I found out about that guy from the passenger seat, who I've never heard of before, he knows little to anything about cars, at least about how they work. I think he said he's only been a car guy for about a year. If most any of us would have been in that passenger seat we would have figured out what the driver was doing. And we would have put a stop to it.