to be cross with my mum for accepting a lift from a stranger?

[lightlyscrambled]

Mum broke down on her way home from work. She was in a garage courtesy car with no recovery policy and her own didn't cover her. A man stopped to help move the car off the road; she then accepted a lift home from him - a 40 minute journey in the dark. We live in the same town, dh and I were at home and we would have jumped in the car to go and get her without a second thought (which she knows).

I know that there are kind and helpful people everywhere and she obviously came to no harm but why take the risk instead of just phoning me? It's not like she had no other option. I'm really annoyed that she put herself in this position. Grrr

I absolutely agree and I would never accept such an offer these days! I think I was very naive and would not be so accepting ever again. I would most certainly say no thanks!

Queen, how very odd. I too accepted a lift at Swindon station to Marlborough many years ago (I was about 20). It was from a bloke in a van (eeek!) but I think it was a postal van of some sort and he looked nice and respectable so when he offered I said yes.

I look back on it and think I must have been out of my tiny mind...

i stopped to ask directions on a ver lonely country road off a rather gorg looking 18 - 20 year old.

anyway he asked for a lift to the top of the very long country lane and i did

this was only last year

I'm a random lift offerer and a random lift accepter - so far all good - life's too short to be so negative all the time [bgrin]

I just don't understand these references to 'these days' as if there are more rapists, murders and general baduns around now than there were an unspecified number of years ago.

Check the stats. You are now more at risk now than you were in some halycon past.

Of course you need to apply good judgement and err on the side of caution but an older lady accepting a lift from a kind person who has helped her after she has broken down is hardly high risk. As a previous poster has said there is probably a greater risk standing on the side of the road waiting to be collected.

Very well said Patch.

I often say the same when I hear/read people banging on about paedophiles living on every street corner or loitering in parks.

i picked up a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere at about 2am once. gave him a lift for about an hour an a half and dropped him off at reading services with £20 for a sandwich and a cup of tea (said his wallet had been stolen).

he claimed to be in the army, (as is dh) and named a couple of people that i might know, one of which was his cousin. weirdly, this bloke was our best man...

anyway, he told me not to give him any money but i insisted, and just said he could give it to his cousin to give back to me.

the best man brought his family around for sunday lunch a month or so later, and i asked him if his cousin had told him about the amazing coincidence (me picking him etc etc). he has no cousins. turned out he'd picked the same bloke up in a completely different place, given him some money, but given him a business card so he could return the borrowed cash (hence the guy just reeled off the name, as he'd been carting his business card about with him! he must have been freaked when i said he was our best man, and i was chatting to him about this bloke's wedding, and kids etc )

never did find out who he was, or why he was spending his life hitching round the south of england cadging a fiver here and there from strangers... i mean, why would you?

anyway, i'm now forbidden from picking up hitchers. i'm quite disappointed actually, as for a whole month i got to use it as proof that not everyone is a crazy, and you never know whose brother/ son/ husband the chap at the side of the road might be, so everyone should pick up hitchers etc etc.

but it turns out, actually, you don't!

(lol at bumpsoon - that's hilarious!)