The entire point of “digital nomad” living for most is freedom and exploring. Being trapped to visual site of your car is the opposite of freedom. All the pretty people making highly edited videos about how wonderful sleeping and living in your car or van leave out this really important fact. It is not safe to leave your car alone.
This guy had everything stolen out of his suburban—twice. They just broke the window and unloaded everything. He’s gone to extreme lengths to ensure it does happen again, far too much work for someone who wants to live that way.
The one guy on Twitch who used to stream from a remote van stopped because it was too dangerous.
The homeless guy who lived from his car and streamed Twitch stopped. No one knows why. But it is pretty obviously because it became too dangerous.
Expensive ebikes have been stolen from several people in gated RV camping sites.
I knew I wasn’t being paranoid about leaving my car for long periods of time in very remote locations full of all of my most valuable possessions—including my work-issued laptop required to do my job and get paid. (I’m a contractor, I don’t get paid if I cannot work no matter if it is my fault or not.) All it takes is once. I cannot imagine leaving my car at a remote trail head for more than a few hours. It’s a sitting duck. This is when paying for a patrolled campsite, KOA, or hotel makes a lot more sense.
Most people who live out of their car never leave it. They are always there.
The one cyclist who makes videos has a very minimal setup and doesn’t take that much extra at all. He also made most of his videos car camping in the winter, when thieves would freeze to death trying to steal his stuff.
The guy who had stuff stolen from a trail head advices everyone to “hide all the valuables in the car” which is impossible for someone doing any amount of time. Same advice from Oregon police dealing with huge crime waves at trail heads everywhere.
Almost all of the “it’s completely safe” people live in the western US as well there there are truly large remote areas. In fact, there are virtually no videos of people attempting car camping and van life in the eastern states. The population density makes it much harder to do so safely (as do the trees).
Then again, Mt. Hood (which is out west) has one of the highest car theft from trail heads statistics. https://youtu.be/iBBV2Bpcr8Q It is impossible to park at any one of these places I would normally park simply because I have extra stuff in my car.
Appalacian trail is no better. https://youtu.be/6oHn_SDJrzo
By the way, this is the same problem I have with bike/adventure camping. You cannot leave your bike, ever. Once you have all your worldy possessions loaded onto your bike, you cannot afford to leave it even for an hour while you go into a store or pub and relax. There are security systems that will inform you if someone touches anything, but by then it will be too late. You can wrap up the whole thing in a tarp with a lock, but the hassle and weight make it not worth it. It’s just better to keep your bike with you at your side at all times unless you can have a specific person watch it for you. This is why so many people do these bike rides with at least one other person. This also just makes sense because one of you could get hurt and needs the other to call someone. Solo travel and adventuring into remote places sounds romantic and looks amazing but is really pretty fucking stupid. This is why you mostly only see naive young people doing it (like I did).
The safest adventure is one where you park, not at a trail head, but at a hotel or some safe place and then load up a bike with all the bike-packing gear and get to the location for camping that way. All the valuables are with the car in a safe place and all the camping stuff is with you on the bike. But that is not nomadic life, that’s just adventure cycling and bike-packing. Even better is just biking around your local area re-discovering stuff you’ve never seen before and saving up money to do a supported bike ride out into those wild areas you want to go.