I was hoping there'd be a follow up to this story because something is really fishy.
If you hear the 911 call...the operator clearly asks him if he's tried to put the car in neutral...and he says...
"m'am, I'm in a BMW and if I do that...if I slam it over...it will drop down into a lower gear"..."and I could spin out".
Well, that not true because his e53 X5 would have the STEPTRONIC (PRND S/M) gearshift lever...if he was in D (drive) or even in the S (sport) or M (manual) shift gates...if he moved the gearshift lever into N (neutral)...the transmission WOULD NOT downshift. In fact, if he was in SPORT mode and moved it back to "D"...more than likely the transmission was in 5th gear so moving to D would upshift into 6th gear and the engine RPM would have dropped.
Secondly (as mentioned above), he could have turned the ignition to position 2 or 1 and it would have killed the engine...but left him with steering capability. He wouldn't be able to turn the ignition completely off to the point the the steering wheel would LOCK because that can only occur when the transmission is in PARK.
Third, the car's brakes (if in normal working order) should be able to overcome the accelerator pedal...and I believe BMW chimed in at the end of the story and mentioned that this is part of the vehicles engineering design...if you press & hold the brakes while accelerating...the car will stop.
So I call
