Hitchhiking

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See also Hitch hike for other meanings

Hitchhiker in Luxembourg, 1977

Hitchhiking (also called lifting, thumbing or hitching, Thumb up a ride) is a form of transport, in which the traveller tries to get a lift (ride) from another traveller, usually a car or truck driver or occasionally even a motorcycle driver. Hitchhiking is also called by the French term autostop, especially in Europe.

The distance covered may vary from a short distance that could also be walked, to a long journey involving many rides. Those who choose to hitchhike usually do so for one or more of three reasons: necessity (limited or no funds, no transportation, missed a bus or train, stalled or broken vehicle, accident, etc.), environmental efficiency (re-using rides rather than creating new ones), or adventure (serendipitous travel, meet new and unexpected people).

Hitchhiking is forbidden in some areas, such as near prisons. In some cases, a local government, such as New York City Section 4-04(e)(2) of the [New York City Traffic Rules] where hitchhiking is widely considered very dangerous, may ban it altogether. Certain US states have created conditional bans, such as Utah, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada; it is frequently illegal on the actual shoulder of Interstate highways, but usually not from the highway on-ramp (entrance). On the other hand, the state of Oregon permits the freedom of hitchhiking (as well as walking) right on the Interstate.

Areas which do not permit pedestrian traffic (such as limited-access highways) are typically by implication off-limits to hitchhikers, even in the absence of laws directly addressing hitchhiking itself. This also applies to roads where there is no stopping.

Contents

Method

Most places have some regionally-dependent method by which a hitchhiker signals to passing drivers that they are looking for a ride. In many parts of the world, including North America, hitchhikers traditionally stretch out one arm and stick out their thumb pointing up. In South Africa, a hitchhiker may show an oncoming car the back of his hand with the index finger raised, rather than the thumb. In Poland, the hand is held flat, and waved. In India, the hand is waved with the palm facing downwards. In Israel, the sign is a stretched forefinger pointed toward the road.

A hitchhiker may also hold a sign with the name of their destination. This saves drivers from having to stop to find out where they are headed and may have the effect of inducing some drivers to stop when they otherwise would not. This is considered unsafe by some, because a predatory driver can then act like they were headed exactly where the hitchhiker is, just to get them in the car.

Using signs with a destination that is (too) far away from the current location may deter drivers, althought there are two locations in the United Kingdom where it is possible to have a sign pointing to a location that is more than 800 miles away, those to being Land's End and John O'Groats, if only because they are the two most distant points in the United Kingdom and have a history of travel between them in a multitude of ways.

Often nothing is given or performed in exchange for the lift, but some hitchhikers will contribute money for fuel and others will feel the provision of company on the trip is itself a worthy contribution. In some places, such as parts of central Asia, hitchhikers in cargo trucks, especially foreigners, are expected to pay for the ride, usually some portion of the usual bus fare for the trip.

Reasons

A hitchhiker may have several reasons to travel in this way, amongst them:

not being able to afford alternative means of transportation;
where no public transport is available and one has no own vehicle available; one can distinguish:
* there is no public transport at all;
* there is no public transport at the time one wants or needs to travel:
** public transport is very infrequent;
** the last bus or train of the day goes very early;
** one misses the last bus or train;
because of social equality reasons
because of ecological and political reasons (reducing dependency on fossil fuels);
for the challenge of using limited resources to reach a destination;
for the sense of adventure that not knowing where you will be at the end of the day presents:
* it is a direct method of release from the limits imposed by plan, schedule, and similarly deliberative ways of control;
because of the new interesting good people one usually meets on the road
for the sheer and simple love of it (many hitchhikers are known to become passionately enthusiastic about this mode of travel);

A mixture of the first two reasons is when the only alternative is an expensive taxi. Many current-day hitchhikers combine hitchhiking with hospitality exchange networks for many of the same reasons (cheap; social political reasons; meeting people).

Car drivers may also have several reasons to give lifts, for instance:

they want companionship;
in many areas (especially around cities), drivers who have more than one person in their vehicle are allowed to use special High-occupancy vehicle lanes that are usually quicker than normal lanes. See, for example, slugging.
they have hitchhiked themselves and know how hard it can be;
simple good will;
requests for drugs and/or sex;
a sense of social responsibility (for example sharing resources, filling single occupant vehicles);

Hitchhiking is often resorted to by stranded motorists or people without money or transportation such as the homeless or students while others engage in it as a passion or even sport.

Reputation

Although most hitchhiking occurs without incident, it has a bad reputation with some people. Some criminals who prey on the good will of others to rob or molest have masqueraded as hitchhikers to procure victims, or picked up unsuspecting hitchhikers themselves. There is some dispute as to whether it is actually less safe to hitchhike now than in the past, or if simply more reporting increases the visibility of negative examples — see Safety below.

This appears to be restricted to the western world however. For example, many eastern European governments firmly supported hitchhikers and in many eastern European and developing nations it is still a very mundane and ordinary occurrence, with hitchhikers a part of the ordinary social landscape, in some places crowding one another out waiting for rides.

Any number of urban legends are told about hitchhiking, in which either the hitchhiker or the car driver may take on the role of a boogeyman. For example, some stories have the driver as a ghost, or the hitchhiker as an escaped convict. The folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand wrote an entire book titled The Vanishing Hitchhiker, using the Vanishing Hitchhiker legend (references) as his prototype.

Chances of getting a ride

There are many things to consider that affect the hitchhiker's chances of catching a ride. Some of these include:

Traffic density

Catching a ride does of course depend on there being people to offer one. If someone is trying to hitchhike and only sees a vehicle go by every half-hour, it may be to their advantage to walk to a more frequently travelled road. There does however appear to be a maximum as well. Once the frequency of the traffic becomes too high, the chance of someone stopping actually appears to drop. This may occur for various reasons:

Heavy traffic makes stopping more dangerous, so one may feel less inclined to do so;
Often, areas with heavy traffic include a large number of local vehicles that are not going any significant distance;
The construction of new highways to bypass existing roads typically leaves the original road with disproportionately local traffic;
People may not feel as compelled to pick up a passenger if there are a large number of vehicles on the road, thinking that someone else will pick them up anyway.

Traffic speed

The actual speed of the traffic plays a major role in the chances of someone stopping. If a vehicle is moving at high speed, it takes considerably more effort to stop and then get back up to speed than it does if they are moving at a slower pace to start with. For this reason, one of the best places to catch a ride is immediately after an intersection or any other place where vehicles are forced to stop or slow down.

Road condition

In order for someone to stop and pick up a passenger, the road must offer a relatively safe means of doing so. Most drivers will pull over to the shoulder of the road if one is available. If there is no place for a driver to pull off of the road, then the traffic needs to be light enough that one can stop in the road without obstructing it.

Presentation

The way hitchhikers present themselves is another major factor in how likely they are to catch a ride. Usually, someone's chance of catching a ride is far greater if they look clean and non-threatening. Standing in a well-lit place offers drivers a good chance to look at you before stopping. In the case of a longer journey, having a backpack visible tells drivers that you are a serious backpacker, not a local, seeking to get a short ride. (This is important in less developed countries, where hitching complements regular public transportation.) A motorist hitchhiking because their own vehicle has broken down may find that remaining at the location of the disabled vehicle positively affects presentation.

As some people have negative thought toward tattoos, such as in Japan and South Korea where most people consider tattoos possible affiliations with criminal gangs, people showing tattoos may be much less likely to be picked up as tattoos scare some motorists.

Number of people

The more people who is trying to hitch a ride together, the smaller becomes the chance of getting picked up, simply because many drivers don't have space for more than one or two people. Drivers also often use lack of space as an excuse to not pick people up. While hitchhiking with a friend or two is safer and more fun, it often makes it slower for the above reasons. On the other hand, a boy and a girl together, or two women may get a ride easier than a single male (see Presentation above and Gender below).

Weather

A little bit of rain or other precipitation can work in the hitchhiker's favor, since many drivers will feel sorrier for the hitchhiker. Too much, however, can hurt the hitchhiker's chances, because drivers will be less eager to have a wet passenger getting their car seats wet or muddy.

Time of Day

Drivers are in general much less likely to pick up hitchhikers at night. Under some conditions, in high-speed highway traffic at night, drivers may not even be able to see a hitchhiker until it is already too late to safely stop.

Gender

Many drivers tend to feel more pity for female hitchhikers and there have been fewer reported cases of female criminals finding prey though hitchhiking. Therefore, women generally have a better chance of being picked up than men.

Location

Urban areas are known for having higher crime rates, and therefore drivers are understandably more paranoid about picking someone up in these areas. In the US, many hitchhikers find that, when possible, getting a ride from a friend to a location outside of 'the city' (wherever that may be) increases their chances, while attempting to hitchhike from an actual city location only causes frustration. Additionally, some areas of countries may have slightly different cultural traditions regarding hospitality. In the US, for instance, hitchhiking is often easiest to do in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest states, perhaps partially because the inhabitants of these regions feel an obligation to maintain the 'friendly' reputation of their respective areas.

Hitchhiking in literature

The writer Jack Kerouac immortalized hitchhiking in his book On The Road. The road has a fascination to Americans; countless writers have written of the road and/or hitchhiking, such as John Steinbeck, whose book The Grapes of Wrath opens with a hitched ride. Roald Dahl wrote a short story called The Hitchhiker, in which he uses the idea that you can hear fascinating stories when giving people a lift to introduce one of his trade-mark eccentric characters. Another lesser known author, a lifetime hitchhiker named Irv Thomas, incorporates hitchhiking into his writing perspective and lifestyle in Innocence Abroad: Adventuring Through Europe at 64 on $100 Per Week, as well as recounting his hitchhiking travels in a memoir, Derelict Days...Sixty Years on the Roadside Path to Enlightenment. Douglas Adams postulated on interstellar hitchhiking in his cult classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, while fellow science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein described interdimensional hitchhiking in his book . The protagonist of Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Sissy Hankshaw, becomes legendary as a hitchhiker in part because of her unusually large thumbs. An in-depth analysis on the practice of hitchhiking in Poland was published, aptly called Autostop Polski ("Polish hitchhiking") [link].

An avid researcher into the phenomenon of hitchhiking, Bernd Wechner [link], has compiled an extensive literature on hitchhiking comprising many hundreds of works from newspaper articles, to research papers and books. A good body of this work is scanned and can be shared electronically with other researchers. The beginnings of a project to make this library available on-line to researchers (in as far as copyright owners permit this) appears on-line [link]. The scanned library has been converted to text with OCR software, but volunteers are required to adopt individual works, proof read and copy edit them, for re-publication on-line. Contact Bernd Wechner for further information [link].

Safety

Crime

The safety of hitchhiking varies from country to country. In the United States, where hitchhiking had been a fairly common means to travel from one location to another well into the 1970s, particularly among the young, the practice has greatly declined in the past several decades and is extremely rare today. This may be because of the supposition that it is unsafe. It can also be noted that because the US has become generally more prosperous since the mid-1980s, more people can afford to own cars and many rural areas now have extensive local bus systems.

There have been very few efforts to objectively study the safety of hitchhiking. Two notable efforts include:

California Crimes and Accidents Associated with Hitchhiking, Operational Analysis Section, California Highway Patrol (CHP), 1974 Conclusion: the results of this study do not show that hitchhikers are over-represented in crimes or accidents beyond their numbers. When considering statistics for all crimes and accidents in California, it appears that hitchhikers make a minor contribution.

Anhalterwesen und Anhaltergefahren, BKA-Forschungsreihe, Sonderband, Wiesbaden, 1989 Conclusion: The current study has demonstrated, that the potential danger while hitchhiking is significantly lower than it is estimated to be and therefore the sharing of rides by and with strangers can very well be included in transport planning.

Neither work was highly publicized. The authors of the German study, easily the most recent and comprehensive study suggest very real efforts to suppress and discredit their results. Such is the apparent strength of the conviction that hitchhiking must be unsafe, that objective evidence is anything but popularized and lauded.

In summary: there is a dominant belief that hitchhiking is dangerous, but every effort to find actual evidence of this danger objectively has been unable to do so.

Road safety

While much of the public discourse regarding the safety of hitchhiking is concerned with violent crime, road safety is an equally important factor; some hitchhikers argue that one is much more likely to be run over than to be assaulted. Hitchhikers can reduce the risk by being highly visible, by standing next to rather than in the road, and by refusing to let themselves be dropped in unsafe places (e.g. on the roadside of a motorway). Hitchhiking can also put drivers into dangerous situations (e.g. rear-end collisions when a driver suddenly stops). Books and webpages on hitchhiking often advise to "Think for the driver", which means hitchhikers must also consider the drivers' safety when selecting locations for hitchhiking and deciding where to be dropped.

Miscellaneous

Hitchhiking is often combined with other cheap forms of transportation, such as walking or travelling by bus or train.

In Poland, during the communist regime period, hitchhiking was institutionalized. Many people would have a formal document for recording travels and they would give the driver confirmation that the travel occurred. The Soviet Union instituted a coupon system that benefited the driver. It was probably similar in other communist countries. Hitchhiking was likely considered much safer in Poland at that time. In Cuba, truck drivers are still obliged to pick up hitchhikers. And in Romania hitchhiking is so much part of the culture that it can be hard to get a lift simply due to the intense competition.

In Eastern Europe, especially Lithuania and Russia hitchhiking turns into adventure sport. There are Hitchhiking clubs with regular gatherings, hitchhiking schools, competitions, hitchhiking gear, etc. From 1992 to 1993 Russian hitchhiker Alexey Vorov made a first trip around the world, hitchhiking by cars, planes and boats.

In Israel, hitchhiking has been semi-institutionalized as a method of transport for military reservists: picking up a hitchhiker in uniform was considered a civic duty. However, an incident occurred in 1994 when a hitchhiking soldier was picked up by members of Hamas, who kidnapped and murdered him.

Slugging is a variation on hitchhiking, specific to the Washington, D.C. area and used as a means of daily commuting to and from work.

Hitchhiking can also be used as a way of raising money for charity. The UK charity [Link Community Development] for example raises a large amount of money each year through its Morocco and Prague Hitchhikes. This is done by students all across the UK who go on a sponsored hitch from their university city, for example Nottingham, Leeds or Cardiff.

Hitchhiker at liftershalte in Den Haag

In the Netherlands there are official hitchhiking spots, called liftershaltes.

A hitchhiker is also a type of letterbox, which is part of an outdoor hobby known as letterboxing. In this hobby, the hitchhiker (a stamp and a logbook) are discovered in a letterbox by a letterboxer, and are removed, to be placed in another letterbox elsewhere.

Famous hitchhikers

Jack Kerouac hitchhiked in America and wrote many books about his experience.
Kinga Freespirit hitchhiked around the world with her friend Chopin.

References

External links and references

[digihitch.com - Hitchhiking, Rail and Road Travel] - Active community of hitchhikers with tips, discussions, route info and worldwide travel resources
[The Hitchhiker's Guide to Hitchhiking] - a wiki project to collect hitchhiking know-how in the spirit of Wikipedia and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
[hitch-hiking.info] Hitch-hiking research and articles by Bernd 'The Thumb' Wechner
[Fare l'autostop in Italia - Hitchhiking in Italy]
[Legendary Rob's Hitchhiker's Guide to North America]
[The Neglected Art of Hitch-hiking: Risk, Trust and Sustainability] by Graeme Chesters and David Smith (2001)
[Tomthumb.org - Hitchhiking from England to India] Free, full-length book
[The Vanishing Hitchhiker urban legend]
from
[Hitchhiking in the Netherlands]
[Hitchbase - Database of hitch hiking spots]
[girls.hitchbase.com -information page for hitchhiking girls]
[Website of the Vilnius Hitch-Hiking Club]
[Archive of the main hitch-hiking mailing list]
[Website of the Dutch Hitchhiking club BOC, based in Utrecht, founded in 2005]

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