Steering Gear Box Shaft Pitman problems of the 1996 Nissan Maxima

I faced a rare (I don't know I am thinking it as rare) problem with Nissan Maxima. When I was driving the vehicle in drive mode my friend, sitting in the other seat, accidentally changed the gear to reverse mode then the strange thing happened, the car steering got locked and the car got decelerated very fast (as I was applying a brake) and even though I changed the gear into drive mode the car wont pick acceleration and behaved as it is in the neutral gear. So, the car stopped in the middle of the interstate on the left lane and we almost got killed by the on coming traffic. Since the steering wheel is not moving we are not able to move the car to the shoulder. What we did is we stopped (turn off) the vehicle on the interstate and changed the gear into parking and started it again, after "few seconds" the car finally moved. I am so scared by the event and I wanted to report to some one and I thought may be NHTSA is the best bet. Please tell me whether it will be the same to any car or will that be only on Nissan Maxima.