Parking pawl

A parking pawl is a device fitted to a motor vehicle's automatic transmission that locks up the transmission when the transmission shift lever selector is placed in the Park position. "Park" is the first position of the lever (topmost on a column shift, frontmost on a floor shift) in all cars sold in the United States since 1965 (when the order was standardised by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)) through SAE J915,^[1] and in most other vehicles worldwide.