Tips for hitchhiking stay safe · Tips for hitchhiking travel safety advice
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Tips for hitchhiking travel safety advice
Tips for hitchhiking travel safety advice
Take care who you get a ride with. Some criminals prey on hitchhikers. If in doubt, turn down the ride. If you're in doubt, ask the driver where they're going and tell them you're heading elsewhere.
Note the vehicle registration, and its make, model, and color before you take a ride. If you have a cellphone, text this information to a friend.
If possible, hitchhike with a friend.
Choose a car with a single occupant or a couple rather than the last seat in a car full of people.
Regardless of gender, choose wisely; some people have loose hands. It's more dangerous when you're riding with multiple people.
Sit in the front passenger seat, if you can. Rear doors often have child locks on them, meaning they cannot be opened from the inside. If you must sit in the back, check the child lock is off before you close the door.
Keep your bag or backpack in easy reach, so you can grab it if you need to bail out. Be prepared to lose it if it is locked in the trunk.
Wear at least some of your valuables (i.e. passport, wallet, money, I.D., bank and credit cards, etc.) under or in your clothes, rather than in your pack. Keep them in different places, so that if you lose one item, you don't lose them all. It is a good idea to have your wallet plus two hiding places, an obvious one and a not so obvious one. A good guideline is that criminals will go for your sock before padding up the groin.
In some places, the police take a dim view of hitchhikers and will arrest you based on the slightest excuse (or at least cost you time you could use to catch rides by running field interviews on you).
While pedestrians may have the right to walk along most roads, doing so in some places can get you arrested, cited, ticketed, or verbally warned. Find out about which roads you can and cannot walk along.
As a general rule, avoid walking along freeways, particularly if it looks unsafe to do so or the jurisdiction you are in prohibits it. In some areas where it is legal to walk on the freeway, it may be wiser and safer to stay on the on-ramp anyway, based on the infrastructure of the road.
If you arrange a ride through a ride-matching website, you can request the ID number of the driver who offers the ride; give this number to someone at home. Ask for this ID when you meet the driver; most will understand this precaution.
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Tips for hitchhiking Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.