This is a funny Croatian guy who hitchhiked the planet. I was debating whether to append this to the inspiration thread - it would certainly fit - but I thought it would be easier for the travel buffs to find if it were in its own thread.
The comments below the video are also worth reading. My main question, about the safety of women who might want to pursue this strategy, was addressed there.
I hitchhiked quite a bit when I was young. The thing to realize is that if you are a female hitchhiking alone, many people will stop to offer you a ride who wouldn't feel safe offering a ride to some random young male. Therefore, you can choose to only take rides from other women or couples or geriatric males, or whatever qualifications would make you feel safer. OTOH, unfortunately, you have already exposed yourself to a certain level of risk, or at least harassment, by simply choosing to walk by yourself.
Usually, I hitchhiked in the company of other teenage girls, and our primary safety rule (this was the early 80s) was to avoid cars with automatic door locks. In this era, which was in many ways more like the 1970s, it was pretty common that if a young man offered you a ride, he would also offer you some marijuana. Therefore, one of my younger sisters who was a pothead, would sometimes hitchhike just to get free pot rather than transportation, so "hitch and party" became a phrase we used. The sketchiest thing that ever happened to me while hitchhiking was one time when I was heading to the roller rink with 2 friends and I drew low straw and had to sit next to the driver who was a thoroughly unassuming, mousy, droopy mustache type middle-aged man. He had some lottery tickets on his dash and he indicated them to me and said "That's a good way to make easy money. Do you know another good way to make easy money?" and I replied "You can just drop us off right at that corner." and he did. On another occasion, I was walking to the roller rink with my sister and a friend on 4th of July weekend and we were dressed in skin-tight jeans and matching red, white and blue tank tops. We suddenly came to unanimous decision to hitch the rest of the way, so we all turned and put up our thumbs along the side of a busy road and caused a multi-vehicle collision. We stuck around long enough to make sure nobody was injured and then quickly skedaddled. Anyways, based on all accounts I have heard, the most dangerous thing likely to happen to a hitchhiker is being picked up by somebody who is driving while thoroughly wasted on one substance or another.
I was debating whether to append this to the inspiration thread - it would certainly fit - but I thought it would be easier for the travel buffs to find if it were in its own thread.