Skid marks on Hollywood Boulevard

It was 2008. My wife wasn’t yet my wife and children were still a long way from our thoughts.

We were in Los Angeles, about to begin a 3,000-mile road trip to New York.

Before that though, there were a few sights we wanted to see that were out of the way of public transport. We also thought it might be wise to get some practice driving on the wrong side of the road before setting off across an entire continent.

I’d never driven on the right-hand side before, but the naivety of youth meant I thought nothing of it.

We went to the nearest car hire shop where we were shown our vehicle: a Subaru Forester.

I’ve hired many cars since, but most rental depots are near airports with plenty of room to get used to a left-hand-drive car.

This one wasn’t.

It sat directly on Hollywood Boulevard, six lanes wide and busy with traffic. Wider than I was used to, but at least there were plenty of lanes available for drivers to avoid the slow Irishman.

I handed over a hefty deposit, as I was only 21 at the time, and signed my life away.

We climbed into the car, turned right out of the lot into the slow lane and pulled up at the lights.

A few days earlier I’d noticed cars occasionally driving through red lights.

One evening a taxi driver did exactly that, so I asked him what he was playing at.

“It’s legal in California,” he told me.

What he neglected to mention was that it was only legal when turning right, away from oncoming traffic.

“Right on red,” they called it.

Back at the intersection, I wasn’t turning right.

I was turning left.

Not only that, I was sitting in the furthest right lane of a six-lane road.

With the taxi driver’s advice still fresh in my head, and keen to get away before anyone pulled alongside me, I ignored the red light and looked ahead.

There was a vehicle in the distance.

I decided it was far enough away for me to make a break for it.

I decided wrong.

Completely underestimating its speed, I pulled away from the lights and swung left across six lanes of traffic.

The noise that followed was like nothing I’d ever heard.

A cacophony of car horns, women screaming, tyres screeching and a pickup truck so large it may as well have been an army tank, hurtling towards the passenger side of our car at what was probably 80mph.

Plumes of tyre smoke billowed from the truck.

Then everything went into slow motion.

My life didn’t flash before my eyes as you might expect.

The first thing that crossed my mind was:

“There goes my deposit.”

The next thing I thought was that Lil Wayne’s Lollipop, which was playing on the radio, was a terrible song to die to.

And finally, I remember wondering what the good people at Hertz were thinking as they watched this carnage unfold from their desks, not twenty seconds after waving me off.

We held our breath and tensed our bodies, bracing for the inevitable impact.

At the same time, I hammered the accelerator in a desperate attempt to get out of the way.

Unbelievably, there was no bang.

We survived.

Thankfully, nobody else got caught up in the melee.

There wasn’t a word spoken for what felt like a lifetime.

I don’t think either of us had even exhaled when I finally broke the silence.

“Hollywood sign first then?”