Thanks ‘The Ryan’ for the smiles link…
As for the friend that got killed (now I’m under the impression that he died in the 1950’s or so…) doing this? There’s a story that you’ve yet to hear in the category. The kid died doing something sinister but he didn’t self-inflict, especially in the form of an inappropriate downshift.
Here I’ll say it… Was he intoxicated?
Also, If the story originated from back in those days, who told it and continues to tell it?
I don’t think there is any way of stopping a car quick enough to throw someone through the windshield, seat-belt or not, short of running into something. As pointed out above, even if it caused all wheels to stop spinning completely, you would just skid. I’ve locked my brakes at high speeds before (70+) and though it was scary as hell, I did not experience that kind of deceleration.
Maybe he threw it into first, screeched to a halt, and was shot by the guy behind him. 
Lawmill: Ok, then, so how do the rev limiters work? I’ve hit mine while going well under the speed cap on my car, and it just seems as though the gas is cut off.
He was a boarding student at my prep school and in my class.
He died in a traffic accident on a highway around Baltimore.
The story was that he downshifted at high speed. But I never knew if that really happened.
No one has talked about it recently. It is just an event and a question that surfaced in my mind.
That’s weird. I autocross and it’s common practice to let the engine bounce off the rev limiter for a few seconds before a turn when it would be normal to upshift. The engine still seems to be providing power.
I don’t know how it works, probably part of the ECU. I know some at-home and professional modifiers who remove them when performance upgrades would benefit from higher possible rpms.