This article aims to provide readers with the essential skills necessary to living in a vehicle. In order to do this safely and effectively there are certain things you need to know and understand. After you learn these things each person should come up with their own methods for how to accomplish this.

What type of vehicle you have will determine greatly what method you wish to employ as well as your type of personality. One rule of thumb to consider is the bigger the vehicle you have the less stealthy you will be. Now why do I mention stealth? That is because it will determine where and how you can park. Also, it will determine the type of safety measures that you have to take. If you have an RV or big van it will be much easier to determine if someone is inside that vehicle. If you have an SUV or car it will be harder to determine by cop or criminal if someone is in there. This can greatly enhance your parking options. Say you want to park late at night in a parking lot of one of the big branch grocery/retail stores. Depending on their policies about parking your chances of being bothered by parking patrol or police will be greatly reduced if you have a car. Slap some window tints on there and it will be virtually unable to decipher which car is nomadic and which car is from an employee. This can give great feeling of peace when you are trying to sleep. That is the benefit to stealth. Now can you make it work with a van or RV but you have to park differently and think differently about how and where you will park.

Places you can more easily stealthily park include but are not limited to:

Hotels 
Motels 
Grocery Stores 
Big Box Stores such as Target/Walmart 
Apartment Complexes 
Sides of street in neighborhoods 

This list goes on…

I want to preface this next section by saying that nothing about living in your car is illegal. It’s just that if you don’t want to be harassed and feel safe there are things you can do to mitigate any potential problems. Take this as almost as a handbook to navigating the roads while living in your vehicle.

There is also an element of don’t F with me that a car with window tints gives off. In my whole year of driving around 15 percent tints I was not pulled over once. 15 on the tint spectrum is technically not allowed in most states even according to Florida. The one above that at 35 is legal in most states and 5 percent tint is limo tints which I don’t recommend getting unless it is for the rear window only. I like 15 percent tints because you can still let light in when driving around during the day by cracking the windows slightly. This will give more light in the car and give the impression that the tints are lighter than they actually are. And when you want to go extra dark on the windows you put sunshades on the front of your car and magnetic shade covers for the side of your windows.

Another accessory that can greatly increase your stealth is by using mosquito net covers that slip on over your car back door windows on either side. A lot of soccer moms use this when going to the park with their kids to be able to circulate air in the back and keep the bugs out. It is must if you are trying to fend off the Florida Mosquitos. And can be great to let air in while you sleep. If you have a sunroof that is a huge plus.

One more layer of stealth protection can be pinning a dark sheet to the roof of the inside of your car along the back window. That way you can roll down your windows with the mosquito nets and it still gives great privacy while letting air in.

What about room in your car? How do you stretch out and prevent your legs from clotting up? What I did and you can consider doing as well is removing your front passenger seat and replacing it with a couple couch ottomans from Walmart that you measure to size. And then depending on how tall you are, removing the back seats as well so you can extend into the trunk, either feet first or head first. This must be down after you have you state inspection for your car and realize it may not pass after this unless you get seats back in depending on what state your car is registered in.

What happens in the case that you do get pulled over and end up in the awkward conversation with a cop where it can kind of obviously be seen that you are residing in your vehicle?

Well that is where you just have to know how to interact with the police in general. The first thing that you want to do is act cool, not confrontational but also not divulge too much information. What you have to do is provide just enough information to dispel their worries that you are not trying to rob any vehicles or stores in the vicinity. If you don’t provide them the courtesy and respect of dispelling their worries that you are doing nothing more nefarious than just resting for a quick bit. That means that they cannot issue you a trespass. Once, they start asking more questions about who you are, what’s your identity, where do you work, what city you are from, etc… That has then moved from dispelling their concerns to now they are fishing for something more. At that point you can politely decline to answer any more questions. They are then trying to incriminate you on something and the more info you give them, the more liberal they will feel to try to violate your rights in some way. According to the 5th amendment, truthfully, you don’t have to answer any of their questions. But your goal isn’t to have any unnecessary confrontation with someone who has a gun, nervous about how they are interacting. Most police officers are like robots that are trained to just try to get you arrested. Don’t F with police, don’t interact with them, they are never your friend. They serve a purpose, that is to put people in jail. Which may be in your favor if you are on the receiving end of someone’s criminal behavior. Be polite, dispel their concerns, don’t give any unnecessary information and move on with your day. That is unless they are giving you directives under the threat of arrest to do something such as provide ID. If they detain you for some reason or say you are arrest, don’t argue with them, you will have to do that in court. Shut up and get a lawyer if they want to escalate. See that is where uneducated people with law enforcement get themselves in trouble, because they don’t understand the nuances of the law with what are their rights and what are not, when they apply and when they don’t. EVERY citizen should be trained on their rights in America, otherwise you are going into situations blind. To get a more in depth understanding, I recommend searching for videos on the YouTube where lawyers and first amendment auditors explain how you can interact with police in a successful manner and develop your own approach.

If you are in a town or city for a few days and don’t want to be bothered I learned this little trick. First, thing you want to do is drive around the whole town, find where the bad areas are and where to good areas are. During the day you want to stick around, let’s say, the not so upscale side of town. That’s because if you are spending all your time around the best side of town you are going to stick out like a sore thumb more. So you want to save that until you

Now I have never gotten a speeding ticket before this journey either. But surprisingly, what I found is that cops don’t want to pull over window tinted vehicles and I think what that has to do with it, is because there is a fear and uncertainty about what may behind those windows.

What is important to note is that I drive very well, I always check the mirrors to see if there are police around. I always use signal and never go over 13-14 mph. Residential only over 5 mph. That is because if you go higher than these speeds you are almost always likely to get pulled over. If drive super slow that will draw a red flag from a police officer and will draw attention. But if you stay at 5 mph then you should be fine if are not driving like someone who is drunk.
I noticed a phenomenon however with RVs vs. van-lifers vs. car. If you have an RV you tend to be less likely chance to be bothered by law enforcement. This comes down to a current paradigm of being classist against people living a nomadic lifestyle. Because RVs are seen to be more of a Boomer lifestyle where it requires money. If you are rigging a van or a car to suit your needs that tends to be looked down on more so and will be met with more resistance in certain areas. That, I believe, is because it is different outside societal norms and anything different or changing the paradigm of how people want to live it will always be met with resistance.