as the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy says......DON'T PANIC. you still have brakes even if they don't seem so good there should stlil be at least some vacum in your inlet manifold and you still hjave steering it's just not power assisted, I was once driving a 10 tonne Volvo B10B Bus when the engine failed mid-roundabout, loseing my powersteering, i merely hauled on the steering wheel to get the bus around the roundabout, if i can get 10 tonnes of bus round a roundabout with no powersteering i'm not worrying about the lexus.
Strange siproad if omeones coming towards you and the guy behind is too close anyway if you are worried about them. plus you can just bang it into neutral and restart the engine without havign o turn it off first like in a lot of cars.
That all being said it's probably the fact that i worked for First bus (Worst bus...) for 4 1/2 years 13 days a fortnight 70-80 hour weeks that i'm kind of prepared for most things to fail on vehicles i drive....
Not the wheel nuts coming off but some berk putting the wrong oil in the Diff and casuing it to snap the driveshaft coupling mid-roundabout, the brakes on the wheel caught fire shortly after this.
You mustn't do much driving if you think a slip road with traffic coming towards you at the top is strange.
I can't speak for your strength but as a disabled person there was no way I could steer the beast out of trouble and my 5 foot wife could never do it either, especially when you are panicking to stop the thing from hitting something or going in a ditch.
And I can assure you there is not one ounce of gunk in the engine no sticky valve, no engine error codes, all sensors and everything else either new or cleaned.
I can now bang it in neutral as I know where it is, it's OK saying don't panic, but when you buy a car and driven it for hours in traffic jams then you want to give it a burst (within legal limits of course) And all is fine, in a Lexus you sort of drift into a sense of full relax mode, so when that call of nature happens the last thing on your mind is to bang it in neutral. I totally forgot where the handbrake was in the panic which was my first reaction, when the handbrake couldn't be found I had to take my eyes off the road to find neutral hoping I didn't put it in reverse.
All said we shouldn't have to remember to bang it in neutral, turn the AC on or worry about long journeys, no matter how old the car is.
They knew about it and should have done something about it.