Highly suspicious, especially during lockdown when we should not be car sharing unless in emergency situations.
I have offered strangers lifts in the past (pre-Covid) in bad weather when I could see they were struggling or I know the bus was late but only elderly women ( I am also female).
Decades ago, when I was a young teenager, my mum and I were waiting at our local bus stop in the pouring rain when a black Mercedes pulled up and the lone middle-aged man driver offered us a lift. My mum accepted with thanks. She got in the front and I got in the back and we drove off.
I thought it was odd that she didn't introduce me but had been well trained not to ask (dad in a job that required lots of socialising and appropriate manners from the whole family) so I spent the journey appreciating the poshest car I had ever been in.
When he dropped us off in town, my mum's first words as he drove off with a wave were, 'Did you recognise him? Who was he?!?'
Turned out she thought he was someone she knew as she peered into the car through the rain and accepted the lift, but realised once in the car that she had absolutely no idea who he was. She had spent the whole journey panicking that she had led me into an abduction situation while I was happily sniffing the leather seats. Her one faint consolation was a Catholic missal she could see in a pocket under the dashboard.
It was a good month later that someone my mum volunteered with asked if we had managed to dry out after her husband had given the 'two drowned rats' a lift that day. He had recognised her and was just doing a good turn.