NHTSA Complaint #11479276 — 2014 FORD ESCAPE

It started to act like it was stalling out so I stopped on the side of the road and opened the door to listen. The car was in gear but the brake peddle was pressed all the way down. When I opened the door the panel came up with a warning saying the "Transmission not in Park press Ok". So I pressed Ok and closed the door. I drove forward a few inches, listening thru the window with the door closed. It still wasnt acting right so I stopped in the middle of the road, moved the gear shifter to Park and noticed the drivers panel indicated the gear the car was in was Neutral even though the shifter is in Park. I got out of the car and moved it out of the middle of the road and it went over a small hump I couldn't see, and slid into a fence. I spent the next 25 minutes trying to rock the car to either move backward or forward and away from the fence, obtaining a few bruises (nothing serious) in the process, and was unable to move the car on my own. I had to engage the parking brake, lock the car, and started walking to look for help or cell phone service, as I had none where I was. After a stranger stopped to help get it off the road completely, I watched YouTube videos of easy fixes for the problem and found a video explaining how to "push" the neutral safety locking switch, inside the dash surrounding the gear shifter, tried this remedy and it allowed the gear shifter to move and shift into Neutral or any of the gears below (ND12) but will not shift into Park or Reverse. I had someone follow me home and got the car to my house after it happening one more time on the way. The soonest my local Ford dealership could get it in for service is September 8th (roughly 3 weeks after onset of issues and immobilization). I spoke to Customer Service and they told me the car would have to be diagnosed as due to the recall. There's no remedy until hopefully Oct2022 and wont provide a rental until then. Said we'll see what programs I qualify for even though I owe $3400 on my loan.