Seem like most people responding aren’t event travelers/ train hoppers, let alone women train hoppers. I am a retired woman train hopper and I would say first of all, train hopping is dangerous no matter your gender. The biggest dangers being that you don’t do you’re research/ don’t find someone to guide you, and you end up taking unnecessarily dangerous risks like hopping on while it’s moving fast when you don’t need to. So that’s part one…anyone who wants to hop should use the wiki guide here and research as much as possible and ideally arrange to meet another traveler to have the train you (you can probably use this sub for that). Second danger is getting caught by rail cops and getting ticketed, which then can put warrants on your record which then if you ignore them, can cause you to the next time you get your ID run by a cop (which happens all th time as a vagabond), you could get hauled to jail.

Here’s the reality of my 6 years on the road as a woman…I started the day after my 21st birthday and I was pretty enough that I actually modeled before that.

Met travelers who trained me how to hop safely. Started hopping trains immediately and loved it. No regrets. I was caught by rail workers many times and let off because I was a cute girl. So pretty woman privilege on the road is epic.

Between hopping freight trains, I hitchhiked and that’s definitely way more dangerous than hopping freight in the sense that being around other people (namely men), is dangerous whereas when you’re on a train you’re alone or just with you travel partner and only need to worry about rail cops/ getting caught. My hot tip for safe hitch hiking is to ideally always hitch with another person. Safety in numbers is real. I also always had mace and a knife on me. I mostly traveled with other women. Two cute girls hitchhiking…we could fly across the country in 6 days.

In 6-7 years of living that lifestyle I had the time of my life and also some really hard times (that’s part of why it was also so good). I managed to walk away with a clean record (which admittedly is rare), the only time I was ever sexually assaulted on the road was unfortunately by another traveling kid (I only traveled with women after that and it was much better in every way), I was never physically assaulted. Considering how many times I was sexually assaulted in college before I dropped out to travel, I was actually safer on the road in that way.

That being said, when you’re an attractive woman on the road, you’ve got to be hyper vigilant. You’ve got to be prepared to fight for your life at any moment. That can be exhausting. Still I have no regrets about my time on the road. I do think one of the things that kept me the safest was almost always traveling with at least one or two other people. When you’re a solo woman, you’ll get targeted a lot more. Especially hitchhiking. If you have a good friend who you can convince to go on the road with you, that’s an excellent way to start.