Hitchhiking (also known as thumbing, tramping, hitching, autostop or thumbing up a ride) is a means of transportation that is gained by asking people, usually strangers, for a ride in their automobile or other road vehicle to travel a distance that may either be short or long. The latter may require many rides from different people; a ride is usually, but not always, free. If you wish to indicate that you need a ride, you may simply make a hand gesture (signs are also used). In North America and the UK, the gesture involves extending your arm toward the road and sticking the thumb of your outstretched hand upward with your hand closed. In other parts of the world, it is more common to use a gesture where the index finger is pointed at the road. This cultural difference stems partly from an alternate offensive meaning for the thumbs up gesture in parts of Europe and Asia.
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Hitchhiking became a common method of traveling during the Great Depression years when many people sought work and had little money, much less their own automobile. Hitchhiking was given tacit acceptance by the Federal Government during those years when the Federal Transient Bureau dealt with the large number of unemployed persons who were migrating to other areas of the country to find employment. Transients were promised a room and a hot meal at camps set up by the Bureau around the country as long as they could get to them. The Bureau operated such camps until it closed its doors in 1936. During those years, thumbing rides around the country was an accepted fact of life.
Problems arose as a result of random hitchhikers obtaining rides from random drivers. Warnings of the potential dangers of picking up hitchhikers were publicized to drivers. Some of them would rob the driver who picked them up, and in some cases murder them. Other warnings were publicized to the hitchhikers themselves and alerted them to the same types of crimes being carried out by drivers. By 1937, fourteen states had passed laws giving a “thumbs down” to hitchhiking and more than half the states had done so by 1950. Nonetheless, hitchhiking was part of the American psyche and many people continued to stick out their thumbs even in states where the practice had been outlawed.[1]
Hitchhiking is a historically common practice worldwide, and hence there are very few places in the world where laws exist to restrict it. However, a minority of countries have laws that restrict hitchhiking at certain locations.[2] In the United States, for example, some local governments have laws to outlaw hitchhiking, with safety being the stated reason. In 1946, New Jersey arrested and imprisoned a hitchhiker leading to intervention by the American Civil Liberties Union.[3] In Canada, several highways have restrictions on hitchhiking, particularly in British Columbia and the 400-series highways in Ontario. In all countries in Europe it is legal to hitchhike, and in some places even encouraged. However, it is illegal to hitchhike where pedestrians are banned, such as motorways (United Kingdom), Interstates (United States), or the Autobahn (Germany).
The hitchhiker's method of signaling to drivers differs around the world. In the U.S. and UK, one would point one's thumb up, while in some places in South America one displays to an oncoming car the back of one's hand with the index finger pointing up. In India, the hand is waved with the palm facing downwards (or the U.S./UK way). In Israel, the hitchhiking signal is to hold one's fist out with the index finger pointing towards the road.
A hitchhiker may also hold a sign displaying their destination and/or the languages spoken. A more recent method is to go to websites and arrange lifts beforehand, without soliciting directly from the road. This way of transport is a modern way of ridesharing/carpooling. To increase the success rate, hitchikers sometimes smile to show that they are friendly. Also waving some money can be used when you are able to pay for the ride. Made popular by the 1932 film It Happened One Night female hitchhikers have found success in signaling cars with the exposure of a leg like Claudette Colbert had in the movie.
Often nothing more than communication and entertainment of the driver is given or performed in exchange for the lift, but 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.
In some areas of America, hitchhiking is also done by pointing down at the street in front of you, specifically in some inner cities.
For many, hitchhiking is a great adventure and challenge. Each year hundreds of students from the United Kingdom take part in a sponsored hitch to Morocco or Prague in aid of Link Community Development; in 2007, 782 people hitched the 1,600 miles (2,600 km) to Morocco and raised almost £340,000 to improve the quality of education in Africa. Other UK students partake in "Jailbreak" (Jailbreak was invented by Durham students when they broke into a high security prison, so the rumour goes) and thus other universities now copy Durham. Jailbreak is where a group of students hold a competition, usually in the summer holidays/vacation, to see who can get farthest from their university without spending any money on travel (whether money can be spent on food/shelter is up to the participants to decide). Durham University holds the world record for the competition, in November 2010, Thomas Cox made 'jailbreak' history when he and his partner Dave Binns made it to Sydney in under 36 hours. However, due to the fact that the pair organised their flights before the event, regardless of whether they paid or not, many believe that this was not a true example of a charity hitchhike.[4]
Whilst other teams have found some limited success, some have come close to the Durham pair's achievement. Warwick University currently operates the largest Jailbreak event in the UK, with 336 students in 2010,[5] compared to 230 participants at Durham University. In 2010 their winning team travelled to Bangkok in just 36 hours.[6] Cambridge RAG Jailbreak have also produced many notable winners, in 2010 a pair got to Washington DC in under 39 hours by playing magic tricks and solving any given Rubik's Cube under 40 seconds.[4] This year in 2011, the furthest pair so far has got to Buenos Aires. [5]. Cambridge however are allowed to spend money donated during the trip whereas other universities give the money direct to their charity of choice.
Spin offs from this theme have included an event where teams were dropped off at a random location (usually a village) and had to return to campus without spending money on transport; and the newest event "Escaped" where teams had to travel to 5 cities (revealed the day before as Leeds, Birmingham, Brighton, Cardiff and London) and capture escaped "convicts" within 24 hours. The winners "Bitchola and Georgyna" reached the fifth city and convict with only 50 minutes to spare and were only one of two teams to do so.
Itinerants have also used hitchhiking as a primary mode of travel for the better part of the last century, and continue to do so today.[7][8] Many see it as an irresistable challenge and badge of honour to travel so far in such a way, and a sizable portion of today's itinerants travel the entire world by hitchhiking, dedicating their entire lives to what some prefer to call a "lifestyle" rather than a game.[9][10]
Despite this continued interest in hitchhiking, it is widely accepted that the practice has declined in developed countries since the 1970s, perhaps because of a small number of high-profile cases in which hitchhikers have been killed, and negative media images of hitchhikers as themselves a source of threat. Reasons for hitchhiking's decline, and possible means of reviving it in safer and more organised forms, are discussed by Graeme Chesters and David Smith in one of the very few academic discussions of hitchhiking, The Neglected Art of Hitch-hiking.
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. Kurt Vonnegut's perpetual protagonist, Kilgore Trout hitchhikes halfway across the country in Breakfast of Champions. 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. (In June, 2009, Thomas extended that lifetime record to 66 years, with a long-distance road trip at age 82). 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 Job: A Comedy of Justice. 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. Ken Welsh wrote the "how to" book on hitchhiking around Europe called "The Hitch Hikers Guide to Europe" (from which Douglas Adams is rumored to have taken the name for his aforementioned classic). British comedian Tony Hawks writes about hitchhiking around Ireland with a refrigerator as the result of a drunken bet in Round Ireland With a Fridge. An in-depth analysis on the practice of hitchhiking in Poland was published, aptly called Autostop Polski ("Polish hitchhiking").[11] In 2005, No Such Thing As A Free Ride?, a comprehensive anthology of hitchhiking stories and viewpoints was published by Cassell Illustrated. The book was serialized in The Times and named The Observer's Travel Book of the Week. Edited by Tom Sykes and Simon Sykes, it featured contributions from Mike Leigh, Sir Alan Parker, Sir Max Hastings, Tony Hawks and Eric Burdon, amongst others. In 2008, No Such Thing As A Free Ride? North American Edition was published by Goose Lane of Canada and featured JP Donleavy, Margaret Avison, Doug Stanhope, Jeff Lewis and Will Durst, amongst others. In 2009, Iranian Rappers & Persian Porn: A hitchhiker's adventures in the new Iran, was published detailing some of British author Jamie Maslin's exploits on the road. In 2011, an online-author Tomi Astikainen started publishing The Sunhitcher free in the web. In 2011, award-winning journalist published [12] Flaherty talks about taking off for three months from his successful business to hitchhike around America. "Funny. Adventurous. The real thing."
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