The End of the Open Road: How Hitchhiking Died

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/end-of-the-open-road-inside-story-of-how-hitchhiking-died

by Thevet • 11 years ago

49 58 11 years ago

vonnik2• 11 years ago

I hitchhiked up and down the west coast and Mexico in the 1990s, after hitch-hiking had already been vilified in the media. For a large, white male like myself, it was relatively safe, because most of the danger in hitch-hiking encounters actually flows from the hiker to the driver. So if you are the hiker, and you know you're safe, then a lot of the risk has been removed. (For female hitch-hikers, it's another story.)

There were several periods when hitchhiking was widely accepted, and they usually coincided with large groups of otherwise respectable people having to hit the road. The Depression was one of those times. Post-war periods, when soldiers are returning home, have been others.

These days car ownership is so common that you have to be young and crazy, desperately poor, or criminal to hitch hike, and drivers know that.

It's still surprising how many drivers will pick you up. There's a lot of lonely people looking for conversation on the road.

grecy2• 11 years ago

These days ...you have to be young and crazy, desperately poor, or criminal to hitch hike, and drivers know that.

That depends entirely where you live. Move to a ski or rock climbing town and you'll find hundreds of people hitching every day.

I did it for years, and now I have a car, I pickup everyone I see.

dnr• 11 years ago

I think the original article is talking about more long-distance hitchhiking. The sort of localized things like getting a ride from an Appalachian Trail trailhead into town, or a lift back up Teton Pass, or into LCC (all of which I've received and given), are a slightly different phenomena. It's pretty easy to recognize a thru-hiker or skier just from their equipment and clothing, and of course destination, and that removes a lot of the risk.

wildlogic• 11 years ago

I've hitched a good bit around the US and Mexico as recently as 5 years ago. In some parts of the US, it can take hours (or even days) to get a ride. Most truck drivers are no longer allowed to pick up hitchhikers. Mexico was a different story. It wasn't a problem getting rides all the way from Mexico City to Guatemala, even through Chiapas.

tajen2• 11 years ago

France->Australia, anyone? My male, 27yo friend hitchhiked to come and see me in Sydney from France. 5 months, one flight, a few boats, and hitchhiking for the rest: France, Turkey, Tajikistan, Vietnam, Singapore, even Perth->Sydney. I guess he's a bit positively biased because he had only one bad story to tell, a trucker who thought he had a crush with him, and my friend just walked away at the next stop.

seiji• 11 years ago

These days car ownership is so common

Yup, that's why Uber can't find investors anymore.

that you have to be young and crazy, desperately poor, or criminal to hitch hike, and drivers know that.

Obviously it just needs an app with driver/hitcher ratings. "Out of my last 10 passengers, 9 have reported in as Not Murdered! You can feel safe riding with me and my 90% survival rate."

I'd gladly pick up pre-verified people for free. Plus, en masse, it would knock a few tens of billions off other transportation startup valuations just for the fun of it.

vonnik2• 11 years ago

That's a strange point to pick on. Many people who take Uber just can't stand to drive in the city, and find it more convenient to hail as needed. Not correlated with car ownership much.

cafard• 11 years ago

Back about 1980, I overslept, missed a train, and hitchhiked from the Washington Beltway to a town in western Pennsylvania, all in two rides. Again, I am large white and male.

The following year, I was riding to the same destination with an uncle and cousin, when my uncle pulled over for a hitchhiker. My uncle had served in the Navy in WW II, and had certainly hitchhiked in those days.

eonw• 11 years ago

i used to read a forum that was about hitchhiking and train riding experiences. Ive hitchhiked a few times, never across great distances though... would still love to hitch a train cross country though.

AnimalMuppet2• 11 years ago

Train riding is considerably more likely to kill you than hitchhiking. Things like cargo shifting in transit are a whole different deal. When you hitchhike, that means that a suitcase hits you. On a train, it can be multiple tons.

Falling off can mean getting run over.

I mean, sure, the freedom can be great, but... highly not recommended for safety reasons. Really, please think twice.

hurin4• 11 years ago

It's just a ridiculous culture of fear and distrust of others.

gnoway• 11 years ago

It's really not. At the very least, by allowing an unfamiliar person into the car I've made the trip less safe for both of us, because now my attention is split between them and the road.

hurin4• 11 years ago

I've never had that experience, I hitch-hiked after college in a few countries (outside the US), and I found that often people on long hauls are happy to have someone to talk to and stay engaged during the trip.

Am I saying dangerous crack-addicts don't exist? Sure they do, but the idea that you are more likely to be hurt picking up a hitch-hiker than in a convenience store, or by another driver is completely without evidence.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

Is the wisdom of not leaving your things alone in a cafe unattended also a ridiculous culture of fear & distrust?

I hitch & pick up some hitchhikers (except the ones who haven't showered in years), but it seems a simple matter of fact that hitchhiking makes you more vulnerable on both sides of the deal. I don't think it's wrong to consider the risks.

Also if we are to compare statistics, the article puts forward 0.04 murders per day related to hitchhiking in California. Ok, well there's 7.7 traffic fatalities per day in California. But how many people drive on the road each day, vs. how many people hitchhike?

If there were 1 million cars on the road in California each day, there would have to be 5,200 hitchhikers each day for "risk parity" for the two activities. That is, choosing to drive your car or choosing to hitchhike would be equally risky. If there are less hitchhikers per day than that, it is more dangerous than driving- if there are more, it is less dangerous than driving.

The point being that while hitchhiking is not the nation's biggest source of violence, the risk is not as small as the article tries to paint.

hurin4• 11 years ago

Did you actually read the article they are using as a reference for the 0.04 figure? http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/april/highwayserial_040...

beatpanda• 11 years ago

I hitchhiked from California to Washington, D.C. and back last year and I highly reccomend it. The longest I ever waited for a ride was 90 minutes. My female partner and I parted ways halfway through the trip and we both successfully hitched alone with no hint of danger.

Estragon2• 11 years ago

My wife picked up a couple of hitchhikers while driving from Ohio to Central NY last year. She had a good time with them.

jonstokes• 11 years ago

My high school algebra teacher was a really great guy, a former boxer who felt it was his Christian duty (I think he was a Jehovah's Witness) to pick up hitchhikers. His family always tried to talk him out of it, but he persisted under the theory that God would protect him. One day, we showed up in class to find a substitute teacher telling us that he had been killed by one of the hitchhikers he picked up. True story. That's a data set of size one, but still, I'd never pick up a hitchhiker.

Edit: Heh, Google... here's a doc for the murder trial: http://www.leagle.com/decision/19951341658So2d683_11297.xml/...

brc• 11 years ago

That says the conviction was overturned on appeal, and a new trial? Then what happened?

Theodores• 11 years ago

Well, here is a sample size of two. As young adults my sister and myself used to frequently hitch hike on the exact same roads that noted serial killer Fred West used to pick up hitch hikers. We would be hitch hiking independently or with friends, yet not once were we brutally murdered.

Really this hitch hiking thing is like a social network that has gone wrong, to no longer have 'network effects'.

girvo• 11 years ago

I've picked up dozens of hitchhikers, and never once been murdered (that I know of). I don't do it nowadays simply because I don't have a car, and very few people try and hitchhike around here.

branchless2• 11 years ago

I hitchhiked down the east coast of Australia. I had about 6 rides. In at least 4 of them the driver was drinking. I had beers in each so they wouldn't have them. In one car the guy in the passenger seat wasn't driving because he was banned (for drink driving) yet both he and the driver were drinking cans of rum and coke. They'd drink a can, scrunch it and then lop it out the open window before cracking open another. In another truck the guy was having beers whilst driving pulling another car.

In one car the guy said he was stopping for a pee. We pulled off the road, down another road, down another, into a wood. He then stopped the car. I was worried. He got out, too a pee and then off we went again.

Everyone was very nice and we all had fun.

Estragon2• 11 years ago

Was this before or after the arrest of Ivan Milat?

branchless2• 11 years ago

Never heard of him. It was 2001.

tajen2• 11 years ago

Cultural point: Ivan Milat was a serial killer in NSW, the state of Syndey, Australia, in the 90'. He certainly inspired the movie "Wolf Creek", a famous horror movie among backpackers, since it depicts carpooling in the outback with other sane youngsters and getting savagely murdered. The movie is introduced like a documentary, with scary statistics at the beginning, the "based on a true story" at the end, and is very effective at deterring backpackers from doing anything risky in Australia. I would even recommend NOT watching it before a gap year in Australia, or it will kill the adventure.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Milat_(serial_killer) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Creek_(film)

My experience with travelling in the outback is that everyone is well-intentionned, but after a few days on the road in closed circle, tensions arise. Far from the civilization, under the benefit of not being seen by the rest of the world, discussions sometimes heat up and end up as a fight. It's good to be able to walk away as early as possible, like no more than 24hrs after the first tensions. A friend of mine stabbed a redneck who didn't want to let go of his girlfriend; I've had a fight with someone who didn't like my political opinions (he was extreme right) and who practised judo. Just remember to walk away as early as possible... and hitchhiking in case of emergency is a very good way out.

giltleaf• 11 years ago

Hitching is way more common in Chile. People actually wait at toll booths to hop on buses or cars - sometimes with big baskets of donuts to sell. Despite what the article says, the only time I've hitched in the US was in a national park after rain unexpectedly started slamming down.

narag3• 11 years ago

Last time I hitchhiked, the driver was the Spain public enemy no.1. Escaped from jail a few days before, using that soap pistol trick, is still on the run, more than 30 years after.

https://www.google.es/search?q=rafael+bueno+latorre

Uh, never more.

GauntletWizard• 11 years ago

But now you've got a great story to tell! Think of how many more you could get.

narag3• 11 years ago

I already had many great stories to tell, both about hitchhiking and about other things. Not sure why, I was like a magnet for that kind of strange happennings. But I don't like fear, not at that particular level :-)

pluma• 11 years ago

Did he do you any harm?

Otherwise it's just a great anecdote.

narag3• 11 years ago

No, he had stolen a taxi at knife point and took a couple of old-style hippies before... we (me and a friend) thought the hippies had tired of waiting and took the taxi and now they were telling the taxi driver to also took us as solidarity.

Then the man started to drive like in an action movie, "daddy's car" he shouted all the time, rebasing other driver by the right side and asking us if we were snitches, that he had a special treatment for then (indeed, he made a band mate to cave his own grave and shot him facing the ground: "if he awakes, let's him dig downwards").

When he took the highway, we barely could convince him that we had to take the other way. We were terrified.

Edit: I'd always thought the psycopath incarnation in the movies was one of those movie artifacts that someone invented once and others copied. Not at all. This guy was exactly like that.

AnimalMuppet2• 11 years ago

That (almost) happened to me. I was driving across West Germany in 1988, and picked up a hitchhiker. The next day I was in Frankfurt airport, about to fly back to the States, and I saw a wanted poster for him on the wall. (Wanted for murder.) So I found a cop, and pointed out the picture, and said "I picked up this guy yesterday about here, and dropped him off there." The cop said "We caught this guy two weeks ago."

So it was just somebody who looked like him. Still, it made me nervous for a couple minutes...

ufmace• 11 years ago

I don't have much to say on hitchhiking itself, but it strikes me as another manifestation of the climate of fear we have in the US these days - violent crime of all sorts is way down, but we act far more afraid than we did even when it was much higher. To the point that our paranoia hurts us more than the crime did.

Even worse is how it can be self-perpetuating in situations like this - because hitching is so stigmatized, much fewer normal people are doing it on both sides, making the chances of getting somebody crazy higher.

herbig• 11 years ago

Freakonomics did a great podcast about this a few years ago as well:

http://freakonomics.com/2011/10/10/where-have-all-the-hitchh...

weeksie• 11 years ago

I don't think it's a coincidence that hitchhiking became vilified at the peak of the mid century crimewave. It well and truly _was_ more dangerous then. Now, even though the crimewave has subsided, people have scare stories from infotainment journalism and they overestimate the risk, thanks to the availability heuristic.

MichaelCrawford• 11 years ago

This makes me really sad. I used to really enjoy hitchhiking, I met so many interesting people that way.

When I got a car, I used to pick up every hitchhiker I came upon.

codingdave• 11 years ago

I still see a few hitchhikers a week in my town, mostly heading away from the interstate, deeper into the mountains. When I was living in Leadville, CO, it was still common - you would frequently find folks just standing at the edge of town, looking for a ride down into the other mountain towns, and likewise, just off the I-80 ar Copper Mountain, looking for a ride back to Leadville. For better or worse, they always seemed to want me to drop them off at the liquor store, and that was usually the root cause for hitching - lost their licenses.

I guess my point is that in small mountains towns in the west, we have not yet received the memo that we should not be doing this.

CPLX• 11 years ago

It's been about 20 years since I lived in Colorado, but it was very common when I was in college, not only along the mountain/ski routes but even along the front range. I remember hitching from Colorado Springs to Ft. Collins and back multiple times.

chaostheory• 11 years ago

I thought we called it ridesharing these days

mathattack• 11 years ago

My dad used to hitchhike across country. It was very common for people in the military, and the uniform served them well.

I used to hitchhike in college, but it was mostly asking for rides across town in the back of a pickup truck.

jff• 11 years ago

I hitched across Maui once. I got a guy in a nice car & suit who was almost certainly high on coke (he was coke-chatty), a really nice local guy hauling glass to a construction site, a guy in an old van who had a lot to say about Jesus, and a dude drinking beers in his jeep (I accidentally broke the door latch on it, oops). Never spent more than about 10 minutes waiting for a ride, but 3/4 drivers sketched me out.

Still a fun experience.

alecco• 11 years ago

You don't need hitchhiking if there's decent and affordable public transportation. The car culture in US is bizarre for most other half-developed countries out there.

benihana• 11 years ago

You don't need hitchhiking if there's decent and affordable public transportation.

Did you read the article? Even glance at it? Or did you just come here to start riffing on America's car culture? FTA:

In many countries, hitchhiking isn’t just accepted but encouraged. Some municipal governments in the Netherlands, for example, install “Liftplaats” signs in desirable hitchhiking locations. And in places like Moscow and many parts of Cuba, where car ownership is less common than in the U.S., sticking your hand out is just as likely to get you a ride in a private vehicle as a taxi.

notahacker• 11 years ago

I've hitchhiked on account of missing buses before...

ThomPete• 11 years ago

Isn't this just because hitchhiking have been replaced by much more car sharing and networks of people pooling and ridesharing?

Hell I wonder if it actually went up but we just changed the definition.

grellas• 11 years ago

Hitchhiking died because the car culture died.

From the 1950s and into the 1960s, cars were the thing. They were an adventure. You were some moronic kid with nothing exciting to do and, all of a sudden, you had freedom - you could kiss the parents good-bye and hightail it out to have some fun. V8 engines, lots of power waiting to be unleashed, booze in the back seat, a girlfriend or boyfriend to play with, no seatbelts, lots of cigaretts, drive-ins to go to, streets to cruise, etc., etc.

That world is gone now. Of course, any of its elements can be re-created. All the pieces are still there. But the spirit of the thing is gone. Cool people don't waste their time on Saturday nights driving around to impress people with how hot their muscle car is (though they probably do equally silly things as a substitute).

Hitchhiking in its fad sense - i.e., when "everybody" was doing it - was part and parcel of that culture. As noted in this piece, it was probably even more likely that something bad might happen to you back then than it is now for driving around with strangers. So why did vastly greater numbers of people hitchhike back than they do now. For the simple reason that it was regarded as "cool" to do so. Just like it was "cool" to smoke. And just as times have changed for the latter, so they have for the former.

Of course there is some unavoidable risk when you hitchhike or when you pick up hitchhikers. Out of millions of people in America, there are some who inevitably will be predators and who will take advantage of others. The overwhelming majority obviously don't. The risk lies in not knowing whether you will bump into the bizarre exception to the normal rule of human kindness in such situations.

But that risk, together with the alarmist publicity and paternalistic laws that can accompany it, have little to do with why far fewer people are hitchhiking now than they did back in the day. People are strongly affected by their peers and by what they are doing. Then they tend to do the same. In that older era, there was a huge social push to get out on the road in all sorts of ways and hitchhiking took wing as a direct result of that push. Now that is gone. There is no strong peer influence pushing people in that direction. There is nothing cool or adventuresome in the car culture, at least not for many.

And so hitchhiking, at least in America, is left for those who do it out of necessity and for the remaining few who truly enjoy interacting with strangers. For most people, it is a brush-off item that they would never consider. After all, "nobody is doing it."

JoeAltmaier• 11 years ago

But the article mentioned hitchhiking guides as far back as the 1920's. Not just the 50's and 60's. Perhaps we all want to think our generation owned something. But that doesn't seem to fit the history.

Anyway, nobody leaves their house any more, not to drive, not to sit on the porch, not to hike in the hills. Well, somebody will say "But I do!" and that's fine. But the massed millions don't. They go to the mall and fool with their phones.

chrismartin• 11 years ago

Not representative of everywhere, but I hitched (solicited and obtained rides from complete strangers using my thumb) over 27 times last year while thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to central Oregon. Sometimes alone, sometimes in a small group. You encounter a highway after 2-6 days of walking, hitch into town to rest and resupply, then hitch back out to the trail.

I never waited more than an hour, and we usually got picked up in just a few minutes.

Most of them felt like a mutually beneficial exchange. We got a ride, and typically advice of where to stay/eat in town; the driver got to be a little part of a big adventure. Some drivers insisted on detouring to drop us off at the grocery/motel/WWII Japanese internment camp. I can't recall any situations that felt dangerous, though pick-up truck drivers were happy to let us ride in the bed, which is a significant fine for the driver if caught by law enforcement in California.

gprano_• 11 years ago

I hitchhiked over 30,000km in the last few years in many countries of Europe and Asia. I would claim that people have usually gross misconceptions of the risks. It is of course very dependent of who and where you are and which techniques you use, but I would say that the risks involved are on par or rather much less than traffic accidents. Western Europe countries tend to be slightly harder because the people are more afraid, and as I'm kind of sick of these societies rooted in fear I don't think I would want to go to the US. Besides, at least in Europe and Asia, hitchhiking works everywhere if you know how to do it, and it's a more fulfilling way of travelling than anything else I've done.

contingencies• 11 years ago

it's a more fulfilling way of travelling than anything else I've done.

I'd recommend long distance cycle touring. Obviously you have to be a bit more self-reliant, and it doesn't exactly scream "socialise" but you wind up spending time in areas you otherwise wouldn't, where people are super friendly, and truly experiencing the geography and fauna along the route in a way that automotive transport can never match.

stegosaurus• 11 years ago

I hitched a few thousand miles recently across Europe.

As far as I can tell it's just a misunderstanding of statistics and extreme risk aversion that reduces numbers.

This idea that it's more or less dangerous than some other activity just doesn't jibe with me. Life isn't about going to the gym with muesli and green beans and avoiding scary information and so on. It is precious precisely because we have freedom.

On the idea of public transport replacing hitching - that's a completely different experience. It's commercial. You deal with ticket inspectors assuming you are a thief, barriers, overcrowding, limited routes, high cost (the entire point of hitching is having an extended/permanent trip on a budget). Etc.

Self driving cars may well kill it off entirely. And we will have lost something great - one of the few areas of life untouched by capitalism.

mercer• 11 years ago

One thing that might have impacted hitchhiking in Europe is cheap flights. If you can get somewhere in a few hours for less than 100 euro, or hitchhike there in a few days, you must really like hitchhiking or be really poor.

Before the cheap flights, I went hitchhiking not just for fun, but because it was so much cheaper too.

kerny• 11 years ago

I've hitchhiked around 1000 miles in Europe without any problems. I love the experience of meeting, chatting and sharing stories with complete strangers. Most of hitchhiking riders used to hitchhike themselves, so they have a lot of stories to tell, and it's easy way to find out about local culture.

When I've been on a trip to western Ukraine 3 years ago, I picked up a female teacher, which was commuting to her school by hitchhiking every day. Strange that it's easier to hitchhike in poorer rather than richer country.

The End of the Open Road: How Hitchhiking Died

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