I had an older ford truck with the C4 auto trans from the early 70’s. If you were going 80 mph and dropped it into 1st ( L) it would do nothing and just stay in 3rd. When you dropped your speed down to about 25 mph it would drop into 1st (L) by itself, same for 2nd as this tranny had a 2nd gear start off. If shifted into “2” would not engage down until about 55 -60 mph before downshifting… Even the older C-4 had protection not to over rev the engine until safe or grenade the tranny.
If someone did that to me in one of my cars they would be on foot. Other than potential transmission damage issues there are also the issues involving someone doing this and causing a tailgater to plow into you or causing loss of control and veering into the oncoming lane of traffic, getting stopped by the PD whose suspicions go way up when seeing a lurching car in their presence, etc, etc.
I heard the pawl ratcheting in a number of vehicles in the mid 80s, American made, during drivers ed. and riding with stupid young friends.