From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (July 2007)

Hitchhiking (also known as lifting, thumbing, 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 to travel a distance that may either be a short or long distance. The latter may require many rides from different people.

Contents 1 Legal status 2 Signaling method 3 Reasons 4 Safety 5 Sport and leisure 6 Hitchhiking in popular culture 6.1 Literature 6.2 Film 6.3 Television 7 Famous hitchhikers 8 See also 9 External links 10 References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2006)

In most countries, hitchhiking is not illegal per se. However, many countries have laws that restrict hitchhiking at places such as highways, near prisons or at near dangerous locations. In the United States, some local governments ban hitchhiking altogether.

The hitchhiker's method of signaling to drivers differs around the world. In the U.S., one would point his thumb up, while in some places in South America one displays to an oncoming car the back of her hand with the index finger pointing up. In Poland, the hand is held flat, and waved. In India, the hand is waved with the palm facing downwards.

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.

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.

Many consider hitchhiking dangerous, and wonder why people travel as such. There are many reasons, including necessity due to lack of transportation, little or no money for public transit, public transit unavailable, infrequent or unreliable public transit, or he/she can’t drive himself for various reasons. Hitching, for some, may be the only way to get where they need to go. For many, hitchhiking is recreation. There are also locales which are relatively safe enough for anyone to hitchhike. For some, hitching is a way to meet interesting people, companionship, or to challenge oneself. Some, mostly the very active ones, who thumb for the love of it belong to clubs.

Many millions of rides are given every year without incident from either the thumber or the person giving the lift. The level of danger is grossly overestimated.^{[citation needed]}

Safety ought to be high priority for both the driver and the hitchhiker. Both the hiker and the driver should always use caution and common sense before getting into a car with or giving a ride to a stranger, always remain alert, and be ready to defend themselves if necessary. It is not advisable to pick someone up at a spot if stopping will endanger others.

For many hitchhiking is a great adventure and challenge. Each year hundreds of students 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 to Morocco and raised almost £340,000 to improve the quality of education in Africa.

There were fifty hitchhikers supported by several MEPs called Eurizons that did the Tour for Global Responsibility. They traveled over 2500 km. In Eastern Europe, especially Lithuania and Russia hitchhiking is an adventure sport. There are clubs, hitchhiking schools, and competitions. From 1992 to 1993, Russian hitchhiker Alexey Vorov made a first trip around the world, hitchhiking by cars, planes and boats. In January 2007 197 students hitchhiked from Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland to Paris, France in Race to Paris, an event co-ordinated by the University of St. Andrews Charities Campaign. The winners made the journey in just 19 hours and 16 minutes. The event returns as 'Race to Amsterdam' in January 2008.

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.

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 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. 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").^[1]

• (1934) - It Happened One Night
• (1986) - The Hitcher
• (2003) - The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting
• (2005) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• (2007) - The Hitcher

• (2006) - Pick Me Up
• (2007) - Peking Express

• Jack Kerouac hitchhiked in America and wrote many books about his experience.
• Kinga Freespirit hitchhiked around the world with her friend Chopin for 5 years and authored the travel narrative, Led by Destiny.
• Jacob Holdt, Danish author and filmmaker of American Pictures, has hitchhiked over 200,000 kilometers.
• Neal Cassady, friend of Jack Kerouac known pseudonymously as Dean Moriarty in On the Road. Also driver of the bus, Further, with the Merry Pranksters in the mid 1960s. Lifetime hitchhiker and freight hopper.
• Devon Smith was listed in Guinness Book of World Records for most cumulative miles hitchhiked (1973 to 1985), over 468,300 km. He also held the record for hitchhiking all 48 continuous U.S. states in 33 days during 1957.
• Stephan Schlei, from Ratingen in Germany. Hitchhiked more than 1.000.000km. The Guinness Book of Records says that he is the World's No.1 Hitchhiker.
• The Hitcher, a green cockney man witch featured in "The Mighty Boosh".
• Chris McCandless, subject of the book, Into the Wild, hitchhiked throughout the western region of North America in the early 1990s.
• Valeri Shanin, founder of Moscow School of Hitchhiking has hitchhiked over one million kilometers.
• Alexey Vorov, founder and president of Saint Petersburg Autostop League (PASL) has hitchhiked over one million kilometers.
• Elijah Wald, lifetime hitchhiker and author of Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker's Journey, among other books.
• Mick Foley hitchhiked to Madison Square Garden in 1986, to see a now infamous cage match between wrestlers Jimmy Snuka and Don Muraco.
• Famous Canadian hitchhikers include:
  • John Stackhouse hitchhiked Canada for the Globe and Mail in 2000. [1] His stories have since been published as Timbit Nation: A Hitchhiker's View of Canada.
  • Matthew Jackson spent four years hitchhiking Canada from April 1997 until October 2000, independently publishing The Canada Chronicles.
  • Suzanne MacNevin (feminist writer) spent several years hitchhiking in Canada and the United States during the late 1990s.^[2]
  • In the summer of 2006, a group of film students created a documentary about their adventures hitchhiking across Canada. The film will be released in the summer of 2007. They are already planning a second cross-country trip, covering more of Canada^[3]."
• Juan Villarino, founder of Autostop Argentina, the only South American hitch-hiker's network, who organizes the annual hitch-hiker's meeting called ¨Pueblo Tomado¨. He has selfpublished many travel books, such as ¨Vagabonding in the Axis of Evil. Across Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan by hitch-hiking.
• Ludovic Hubler, 29, is a French hitchhiker who spends $10 a day while on the move. He began his life as a nomad at the Val d’Isere’s ski station in the Alps on January 1, 2003, equipped with just a backpack. He hitchhiked to the ‘end of the world’, Ushuaia in Argentina, the southernmost city in the world.^[4]
• Ford Prefect, a fictional space-hitchhiking travel writer in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

• Carpool
• Slugging - Hitchhiking motivated by HOV lane rules in Washington, D.C. area
• Ivan Milat
• New Mobility Agenda
• Freighthopping

• The Kind Ride Share - Got a ride? Need a ride? Get hooked up! Free Ride Shaing Program
• Tips for hitchhiking travel guide from Wikitravel on wikitravel
• myRideboard.eu Hitchiking Forum, European Rideboard.
• Hitchwiki Wiki about hitchhiking.
• Digihitch Encyclopedia of road subculture and many additional resources.
• Open directory hitchhiking links
• Driving Directions
• Shared travels around the world

1. ^ Autostop Polski details from Korporacja Ha!art, in Polish, retrieved December 4, 2006.
2. ^ Tales of a Female Hitchhiker, retrieved on May 31st 2007.
3. ^ http://www.thumbsoutcanada.com
4. ^ http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mp/2007/05/24/stories/2007052450230100.htm