The End of Hitchhiking

 Have you ever made a flip comment, meant to be humorous, then remembered it later and thought “That might actually be true.” 

I responded to one of those pointless FaceBook posts that posed the question “What is the one thing that is destroying the world as we know it?”  The real answer is no doubt climate change, which barely showed up.  The most numerous comment, of the thousands generated, was “Joe Biden”, which shows you who is reading generic FaceBook posts these days.

This thought came off the top of my head and I posted it without thinking.   

“It all started with the end of hitchhiking.”

I’ve had that thought before but never expressed it.  I don’t know when it happened or why and I’ve known anyone else concerned about it.  But hitchhiking is dead, and I think it has implications.  It’s a symptom of something bigger and more troubling. 

I’ve traveled a lot during my almost 72 years on Earth.  I don’t know where hitchhiking falls in the order of miles per mode of travel.  I’ve flown to Europe four times, to both Japan and Hawaii, as well as a winter trip to Mexico or Central America nearly every year since 1988 volunteering for I Care International’s optometry clinics.  So, air travel might account for a lot, because of the big trips.

Being an American in the rural Midwest most of my daily travel has been in cars, old Buicks mainly in the past twenty-five years.  While I drove a lot of miles between Ottawa and both Chicago and Springfield for work, my more frequent daily commute, a benefit of living and working in a small town, began on Ottawa’s north side and ended down the hill on the north side of the rivers, not 2 miles away.

I own a canoe but never had a boat, and have never been on a cruise, so nautical miles are limited mostly to ferry rides, lazy floats down the Fox, a handful of great trips in the boundary waters, and day trips fishing from open boats with outboard motors on Ontario lakes.

I used a Eurail pass heavily during the Summer of 1974, took the train to Springfield for a while there in the late 80s before my cornea transplants, and enjoyed a great ride with my wife on the rails from Montreal to Quebec City up the St. Lawrence River valley.  Now we take the Metra from Joliet to the LaSalle Street station when we visit Chicago and the kids, but rail travel has not amounted to much in my getting around.

But from the time that Eurail pass ran out till the end of 1975, I hitchhiked all over Europe and North Africa.  I hitchhiked from the Smoky Mountains to Ecuador and back to Danvers, Illinois in 1976, save for the occasional cheap bus ride here and there.

And when I once again owned cars, I picked up hitchhikers whenever I could.  I considered giving rides in return for rides given me as good karma.  I never had a bad hitchhiking experience as a rider or a driver.   It was both a way of getting from place to place and an unspoken social contract between humans.  I liked hitchhiking a lot. 

In its purest form hitchhiking is (or was) “I want to travel but I don’t have much money” meets “I’m going that way and I don’t mind having company while I do.” 

Hitchhiking was (I think using the past tense is sadly accurate) Uber and Lyft without the smartphone app, the credit card payment, or the star ratings.  Have we now monetized each and every want and desire humans possess, or are there yet simple kindnesses that don’t translate their worth into cash?  Hitchhiking was ride-sharing in the purest sense.  It cost neither party a dime.  Yet it created value.  Call it human capital.  Call it generosity.  I’m convinced hitchhiking was a good thing.  

Hitchhiking was a personal choice and a voluntary act.  For the hitchhiker, it started with a simple and universally understood gesture.  Extend your arm and put out your thumb. 

I think looking presentable and smiling led to more rides.  I got a lot of rides and never turned one down, that’s for sure.  I ran to cars that slowed as they passed me and stopped, and the first thing I did after stowing my backpack and taking a seat was to thank the driver profusely.  I considered hitchhiking a purely directional mode of travel.  Take me one mile or a hundred, as long as you’re going my way.  All I asked was that the driver let me out at a spot where I had a decent chance of getting another ride. 

As a driver picking up hitchhikers, I admit to slowing down and doing a quick assessment of the person I was about to pick up.  Though I may have slowed, reconsidered, and kept going I can’t as I sit here in the shack remember an instance when I did.  Hitchhikers and those who picked them up were a trusting group of people.  The whole premise was built on trust.  Usually, we discovered we had even more in common as we talked.

Back then driving alone isolated you from others.  Now we call whomever we wish to talk to at any time on our smartphones, and if they don’t pick up, we dictate a message or (dangerously) text them. 

Many times, I think drivers (especially long-haul truckers before CBs) picked me up because they needed to talk to someone, either to stay awake or simply pass the time.  I was fine with silence, but if the driver wanted to talk, I was along for the ride. 

Hitchhiking without conversation was rare. It started with the “where are you trying to go/how far are you going” exchange and built from there. Talking, even if obligatory, taught me how to communicate better.  Meaningful and pleasant conversations extended rides.

And on the flip side, it was very apparent that some people who picked me up didn’t want to exchange ideas, they simply wanted someone to listen to theirs.  I did a lot of listening while hitchhiking.  Most of it was sincere and attentive, though over time I learned to fake it.  Both later proved to be good skills to have.

Hitchhikers got rides and drivers picked up hitchhikers because we didn’t fear each other.  Any lurking fear was overridden by a trust borne out of positive experiences.  To this day I don’t personally know of anyone on either side of the equation being harmed by hitchhiking.  No doubt it happened somewhere but I’m not aware of it.  So why did hitchhiking go away?

Most contend hitchhiking is dead because it is perceived as dangerous.  So much so that police departments discourage it, and many states ban it.  Though lightly enforced, those laws had their intended effect.  Hitchhiking is so rare now that there is a whole generation of people too young to even remember it.

The fear factor was amplified by law enforcement through public service announcements in the 60’s and 70s in the U.S..  A 1973 FBI poster, signed by J. Edgar Hoover, delivers this dire message under a scene of a family opening their car door to a man with his thumb out.  Sounds a lot like Reefer Madness.

To the American Motorist: Don’t pick up trouble!  Is he a happy vacationer or an escaping criminal—a pleasant companion or a sex maniac—a friendly traveler or a vicious murderer?  In the gamble with hitchhikers, your safety and the lives of your loved ones are at stake.  Don’t take the risk!

Ginger Strand, Author of Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that there has never been good evidence that hitchhikers, or those who pick them up, are particularly likely to be raped or murdered.  One of only a few studies by the California Highway Patrol in 1974 concluded the results do not show that hitchhikers are overrepresented in crimes or accidents beyond their numbers.

It’s more likely the widespread fear of hitchhiking is motivated less by evidence than by a pair of other trends.  As hitchhiking became rarer, it seemed more dangerous because of the people still doing it.

People without cars trying to hitchhike might be perceived as weirder, more deviant, or more dangerous.  The more stigmatized hitchhiking became the fewer drivers who were likely to pick someone up.  Fewer willing drivers led to fewer people trying to hitch.  And the downward spiral continued. 

Fear of hitchhiking fit into a general fear of strangers that blossomed in American society over past decades.  For instance, parents instruct their children never to talk to strangers.  Stranger Danger is a word worn cliché.   There is a kind of safety bug that’s taken over in society.  We’re much more reluctant to interact with strangers than ever before.  All those empty seats, all those lonely drivers.  It seems like a wasted resource, doesn’t it?

But others believe the decline of hitchhiking has nothing to do with fear of crime.  Joesph Stromberg, a journalist writing for Vox put together a good piece on hitchhiking called “The Forgotten Art of Hitchhiking-and Why it Disappeared.”  Here’s what he found by talking to others about the topic.

Most experts agree that the decline of hitchhiking has nothing to do with fear but everything to do with increased car ownership.  Since the 1960s, the percentage of car ownership in the U.S. has tripled, and the portion of households with multiple cars has grown even faster.  20% of us own three cars or more.  Add to that the fact that cars now last longer, and increased car ownership has extended to lower-income families.  Fewer of us need to hitchhike to get around.  In developing countries, where far fewer people own cars, hitchhiking is still commonplace.

I was talking about all this with a friend, not in the front seat of a moving car but in the back room of a bookstore.  About the same age, he also hitchhiked. 

“I’ve got a ton of hitchhiking stories,” I said.  “I kept notes in a journal.  I’m not sure anyone would appreciate them now because hitchhiking is so rare.”

“I think you’re wrong.  I know I’d love to hear them.”

“Maybe I’ll blog some, see how people react.”

“Please do.”