In the 1970s, in the United States and much of the English-speaking world, hitchhiking was more than a way to get from one place to another: it was a symbol of freedom, a rite of passage, a challenge to the established order.
Leggi tutto: Hitchhiking and Blood on the Asphalt: The Stolen Freedom of the 1970s
All it took was a backpack, a pair of jeans, any road And trust.
A lot of trust.
The road was a generational manifesto. For many young people — especially women — it meant emancipation, independence, a desire to see the world with their own eyes. A gentle, sometimes naive rebellion against fear.
But not everyone on that road had the same intentions.
Between 1970 and 1980, hitchhiking became entwined with some of the darkest chapters in true crime.
Ted Bundy roamed college campuses with a fake cast on his arm and a reassuring voice.
Rodney Alcala — the killer who once appeared on a dating show — posed as a photographer.
Others never had a name or a face: just traces left on the side of the road, bodies in the woods, pages in unsolved case files.
During those years, the number of young women who disappeared or were murdered while hitchhiking skyrocketed.
Some were specifically targeted. Others were simply alone. Invisible.
The vulnerability didn’t lie in the raised thumb, but in the cultural context around it:
A romanticization of female freedom without protective structures.
A toxic media narrative that often blamed the victims:
“What was she doing out there alone?”
A blind trust in a world we wanted to believe was open and welcoming — but that wasn’t ready to care for those who wandered through it.
Hitchhiking was also a collective social experiment:
We believed that a freer world would automatically be a safer one.
That open-mindedness would be enough to guarantee protection.
But dreaming of a better world isn’t enough.
You also need to build defenses against the real one.
For many, that trust became a deadly trap.
And today?
Today, these stories feel distant — like scenes from a film or a documentary.
And yet, the question remains:
Who truly protects freedom?
And above all: why, even today, do we still ask the victims to justify themselves — instead of asking the world to change?
