My first thought was to turn off the ignition. This will make the car quit going 125 mph.
My gas pedal got stuck one day while I was driving and I started going faster and faster...so I turned my car off and pulled off the highway. Put some WD-40 on the valve inside the engine compartment that controls that so it wouldn't get stuck again, although I have since quit driving that car anyway because it needs a new radiator.
This happened for 150 miles.
Um, yeah, he's an idiot to not turn the car off.
Did he maybe call somebody and ask what to do and they could have told him, "You can turn the car off..."
a starter safety of some sort that keeps the engine from being switched off while at high speeds.
Uh, no, there's usually a safety that
makes it shut off if it goes up to 125 mph. There was clearly something wrong with THAT in this car, as well (well, some will go faster than 120, but not many if they are in proper working order because the computer shuts them off at 120 mph).
In the case of your power steering pump that is a positive safety that makes the car safer. A safety that prevented the car from turning off would make it less safe, ergo no one would think to have created it in the first place.
Also in the case of a safety to prevent the car being put into park from drive would first have to pass through neutral and then REVERSE, which will screw the engine up anyway so I would assume it would quit running at 125 mph that way, as well (yes, I did this by accident one time, though the car survived the ordeal with no apparent problems, the engine light came on and after I shut it off and waited a few minutes and turned it back on, it ran fine). Really I wouldn't see the point of a safety that prevented it from going into neutral (preventing it from going into reverse would be good, of course, and I'm sure that car I accidentally did it in had that since it continued forward after a large WHUMP and jerky motion, presumably the computer overriding the automatic and putting it back out of reverse) and hope that Toyota no longer installs them as it is making the car less safe to do so. I would rather my engine redlined and burnt up than be unable to put it into neutral in the case of the gas getting stuck, which is a common problem in many cars, especially as they age.