In my post college years (the 70’s) I did a good bit of hitchhiking both in the states and all around Europe, sometimes alone and sometimes with a female companion. I even made it from NYC to the door of my parents home in the Midwest in 2 days once. I had a few weird rides, but never a threatening one. I got rides from both men and women, young and older.
Then the stories started to hit the news about psycho hitchhikers, and psycho drivers who preyed on hitchhikers, and hitchhiking went from commonly seen to rarely seen. It went from a benign and friendly way to travel to something menacing and dangerous. Nothing really changed except public perception of it. Come to think of it, the same process occurred around taking LSD too. The news stories about people jumping out of windows, and crazy hopped up acidheads, turned a benign and sometimes enlightening experience into something fearful.
Funny how that works.
