Shift to Drive While Rolling Backward

[FreeGX]

Had an exciting experience last night. Wife and I were driving down a busy 2-lane country road (speed limit was 55), I missed my turn, pulled into a drive and quickly backed into the road to go the other direction. While the GX was still rolling backward slowly, shifted to Drive and it killed the engine! Put it in Nuetral, tried to restart, smell of gasoline, engine would crank, but would not start. Got out and tried to push it back into the drive but it was slightly up hill so that was a no go with just me pushing. Let it roll down hill off into the ditch. Pretty exciting with traffic coming from both directions. After 30-45 seconds (seemed much longer than that) of excitement, I put it in Park, turned the key to the off position, tried to restart and it fired right up, no further problems.

I know shifting in to Drive while rolling backward is not a good idea, but I have done it in other vehicles without it killing the engeine. Is there something unique to the GX that would cause this? Why would it not restart?

Sorry for the long post, but thought this could also have implications for wheeling off-road.

 

[BlackCat]

When I was in high school in the late 90's, my buddy drove his dad's Jeep Cherokee with the 5.9 motor. We thought it was the fastest car in the universe. We once "accidentally" threw it in reverse while doing 55+mph and it shut the truck off, same symptoms you're describing. No idea why it does that.

I'm an Infiniti tech now, and can say that while driving down the road, you can put the car in reverse, and the backup lights come on and the backup camera does too, but it effectively puts the car in neutral.