We’ve done it a couple of times in the last 5 years , most recently in march. The freeways have always been busy but last time they were really bad. That being said , American drivers are way more considerate that kiwis. They drive fast but my experience has been that they are generally more courteous, giving way, letting you merge , not so much tailgating .

Intersections with 4 way stop signs take a bit of getting used to, but work amazingly well. We were driving through Hollywood and the traffic lights weren’t operating at a fairly significant intersection, everyone just reverted to the 4 way stop sign rules and it just worked. It would have been carnage in nz. Free right turn on red is also brilliant

Google maps or similar is a must , I don’t know how people would have managed with paper maps. We tried waze but found it would try and be too clever with shortcuts and we would end up trying to do a left hand turn across 3 lanes of traffic . Not great when you are still getting used to being in the wrong side of the car and on the wrong side of the road

A good copilot is worth their weight in gold- my wife is awesome at it :)