So I am trying to decide if this vehicle is safe to drive or not. Here's the story:

95 4runner, 2wd, 3.0 V6, auto
partial VIN: JT3VN29V5S00XXXXX
Mechanical speedo cable
Speedometer had recently stopped working.
It has now started blinking the 'O/D OFF' lamp. When I put it in test mode, I get code 42 out of it. I found this to mean Vehicle speed sensor #1 issues.
I disconnected both ends to the speedo cable, and sure enough, it is broken.

So the decision/question is: Drive it while waiting for the new cable, or not.

There is a guy on another forum a couple years back that seems to have the same truck and claims he burned up two transmissions because the ECU would not lockup the transmission without a working speedo cable. However on this forum I read a generic toyota document about the ECU where it takes the speed primarily from VSS#2 which is in the transmission, and only uses VSS#1 as backup.

Any expert advice is greatly appreciated.