I'd been traveling round NZ & Australia for something like 9 months, and hadn't driven in all that time. A few hours into a lift going south down the Bruce Highway, I was asked if I could take over for a while. Why not? A bit ropey, tired, and unused to the car, but a car's a car: what could go wrong?
An hour or so later, concentration having wandered, I was jerked awake by a blare from a monstrous horn. I suddenly realised I was something like half way across a one-lane bridge, maybe 50 yards long - one-lane meaning literally one lane, with sturdy fixed fencing running along both sides, so absolutely no way of going left or right or anywhere but straight ahead - and 50 yards from the other end of the bridge, a land train heading towards us at full-tilt. Nothing to do but push the accelerator to the floor and hope. Came off the other end with barely a yard to spare as the land train thundered onto the bridge, came off the road on the left at what must have been 60/70 MPH, tried to get it back on the road, but the wheels baulked at the rough edge, until suddenly they mounted it, and we hurtled over to the wrong side of the road, just missing cars coming the other way. Hauled on the wheel and screeched back to the left, right off the road, along the hard-mud roadside, saw a sort of 'ramp' filling the windscreen, and took off, crashing back to earth a second or two later, then finally coming to a halt. My 'host' turned from the passenger seat, looked me straight in the eye, grinned, and said: "You did well!"
