Hitchhiking - what happened?

June 9, 2006 4:57 PM

Hitchhiking - what happened?

I'm always hearing stories about how hitchhiking in the US used to be a lot more common "back then." Supposedly, even normal people would pick up a hitchhiker, because, hey, why not?

My question - was there really a "back then?" If so, when was it, and what happened to bring about the current state of affairs? Did hitchhiking/hitchhikers actually become more dangerous, or just the public perception of such?

Are there any places left in the world that are still hitchhiker-friendly?

posted by Afroblanco to Travel & Transportation (44 answers total)

I don't mean this to be snarky at all, but have you read the wikipedia entry on hitchhiking? It actually seems to answer some of your questions reasonably well.
posted by JMOZ at 5:02 PM on June 9, 2006

This isn't the US, but in 1972 my mom hitchhiked from England to India, mostly incident free. (Except for one incident that involved driving into a camel in the middle of the night, but that's another story.
posted by dmd at 5:02 PM on June 9, 2006

Hitchhiking has the impression of being more dangerous now, though I don't think it's really true (or very dangerous in the first place). News reporting has changed since hitchhiking was popular, television has made the world a smaller place by bringing news from other areas of the country but also made it seem much more dangerous by highlighting bad things that happen in other places as well.

I've friends who hitchhiked coast to coast a number of times in the 80's and early 90's as teenagers but would absolutely forbid their kids because it's so much more dangerous now - even though I don't think it really is.
posted by substrate at 5:12 PM on June 9, 2006

I the 70's I would routinely hitchhike 2000 miles per year. At some junctions there would be a line, and you had to wait your turn.

You could always count on a hippie in a VW van, but they dried up.

In the 80s you started to get more of the "ass, gas or grass" mentality.

Another source of rides was the mom and pop "let's meet one of these younger generation" things. Also WW2 vets liked to pick me up and tell war stories, but they dried up too.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:15 PM on June 9, 2006

i agree with substrate, although it definitely seems more dangerous, i've got plenty of anecdotal evidence that not much happens to people who hitchhike (at least the ones who lived through it enough to tell me about it).
posted by soma lkzx at 5:16 PM on June 9, 2006

(at least the ones who lived through it enough to tell me about it).

Well, there's your sample bias right there!
posted by delmoi at 5:23 PM on June 9, 2006

Did hitchhiking/hitchhikers actually become more dangerous, or just the public perception of such?

It's not only the perception that it's dangerous to hitchhike, but that it's dangerous to pick up hitchhikers. I don't think either is especially true, but it's the perception that matters, not the reality.

I hitched from Boston to CA in Summer 1970, and there was a massive fear campaign going on then. A lot of the rides I got seemed to be a defiant reaction to the prevailing paranoia, but so long as I rode, it didn't matter to me. I noticed that it got harder and harder to hitch after that, and I eventually gave it up. My observation is that it's very rare now, where once it was common here in NE.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:30 PM on June 9, 2006

Best answer: I assume you're familiar with digihitch.com? They have this FAQ. Their opinion, which is slightly more data-based than mine, says that it's not more dangerous but many fewer people are doing it. I know that there are a lot of people who hitchhike -- people like me who might not normally hitch -- in small communities like Martha's Vineyard and more remote places like up in Alaska generally. I see people hitchhiking where I live, either people working at the ski resorts who need to get into town and don't want to wait for a bus, or people out in my neck of the woods where there isn't a bus. I tend to give people rides, but people frequently tell me I'm nuts for doing so. The story in my family is that I was taught to read in the early seventies by a hitchhiker, so I try to give a little back when I can.
posted by jessamyn at 5:40 PM on June 9, 2006

A few years ago, one of the news magazine shows did a thing on hitchhiking. The reporter hitched rides in the NE U.S. I think, and interviewed the folks who picked him up. I don't remember what the point was, but all the people who picked him up seemed normal enough, so yea, I think the impression is that the hitchhikers are the dangerous ones.

I mean anyone without a car CAN'T be any good, right??!!
posted by clh at 5:46 PM on June 9, 2006

Car ownership penetrated further into society, so that now anyone without a car is presumed, not without reason, to be the very dregs of society.

A relative of mine picked up a hitchhiker a few years ago and was promptly stabbed in the chest.
posted by jellicle at 5:48 PM on June 9, 2006

Anecdotally, hitchhiking used to be much more prevalent. I used to see many more hitchhikers in the seventies and eighties. My family used to pick people up if we had room in the car. I even picked them up myself.

I once scared the hell out of a female passenger. She and I were driving around town posting signs for the upcoming 'gender studies week' at our university in a predominantly white town. A big burly black man asked me for a ride at one stop — he had been hitchhiking — and I told him to hop in. My passenger would like to have died. He was a nice guy and told interesting stories, but my companion — who was apparently not raised to pick up hitchhikers — gave me an earful after we dropped him off.

I don't pick up hitchhikers anymore, and it's because I'm a victim of the hysterical news media. Seriously. I almost picked up a kid the other day, but decided it wasn't worth it. It's been five years since I picked one up...
posted by jdroth at 5:48 PM on June 9, 2006

I think it probably has a lot to do with car ownership being more common today. When I didn't have a car, back around '98-'99, I did a lot of hitchhiking, I even got picked up by, as you put it, normal people. I only had one ride go weird, and even that was pretty benign. My girlfriend did a lot of hichiking around the same time. She had one bad experience that she escaped unscathed, a few weird ones, and many, many good rides.

I picked up hitchhikers whenever I could up until three years ago, when my daughter was born. I never had a proble with a hiker, but I'm not going to take that chance with my daughter in the car.

I also did a lot oh hitchhiking when I was a highschool student back in the late 80's, with no weirdness.

I have a friend who averages one cross-contenental hitchiking trip a year. If he's ever had any scrapes, he's never told me. California is pretty friendly to hitchhikers, and, if my friend is to be believed, so is the rest of the world.
posted by lekvar at 5:51 PM on June 9, 2006

Car ownership penetrated further into society

Does anyone have any figures to back up the idea that car owners as a percentage of the U.S. population have significantly increased since the 1970s? It sounds like a good answer, but something about it seems off.

anyone without a car is presumed, not without reason, to be the very dregs of society

Bit of an overstatement that (as the large and apparently increasing number of carless folks in NYC might tell you).
posted by mediareport at 6:16 PM on June 9, 2006

Sounds like you're talking about long distance trips, but it's still totally common to see hitchhikers along Highway 26 along the route to Mt. Hood in Oregon. Mostly snowboarders.

From the ages of 16 to 18 I worked on the mountain and both hitchhiked frequently and always picked up hitchhikers when I was driving.

I'm female, and I never felt threatened or had anything weird happen. My worst experience was when a middle-aged bitch picked me up and then told me I was a stupid whore for hitchhiking.
posted by peep at 6:40 PM on June 9, 2006

Best answer: Because all the kids that used to hitchhike back from college are now ferried by their parents.
Because all the kids that used to hitch to the Led Zep concert now use craigslist to get rides.
Because airfare across the country is a lot cheaper than it used to be.

In short, because there is less need.
posted by madajb at 7:23 PM on June 9, 2006

This year I hiked some of the Appalachian Trail and in small towns along the trail hitchhiking is pretty common. I hitched several times and had no problems. Of course this is because the locals are used to hikers with no vehicles.
posted by meta87 at 7:28 PM on June 9, 2006

Now I think it's a little like dating... if you are looking for someone you won't find them, but if you are enjoying doing your own thing all sorts of people will be interested in you.

If someone is looking for a ride, I ignore them. If I see someone walking in an improbable place, I stop to see if they want a lift. And vice versa, when I'm walking somewhere I usually get offered a ride as soon as I am resigned to the long lonely walk.
posted by peeedro at 7:40 PM on June 9, 2006

I hitchike in parks and pick up folks in parks, but that's about it.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 7:47 PM on June 9, 2006

did a lot of hitch hiking in the late 70's and early 80's. noticed that in the 80's, it took longer to get rides, and the strange and dangerous rides increased in frequency. almost all of the other long distance hitch hikers i saw were bums.

still pick up the occasional hitch hiker today. i've had problems with giving people rides, but not recently. almost never see anyone hitch hiking around here.
posted by lester at 7:57 PM on June 9, 2006

Martha's Vineyard is still hitchhiker-friendly. I am a single female and I'll hitchhike there. I've had only good experiences. This is in part because it's an island, everyone is identifiable, distances are short, and use of a car is discouraged.
posted by Miko at 8:31 PM on June 9, 2006

i just don't think as many people try it anymore ... and even the media hysteria seems to have died down because there's not that many people doing it

my guess is that more cross country trips are done by air these days ... and local trips are often arranged with friends, or with public transport, or with junk cars

don't forget cell phones ... it's a lot easier to call for a ride if you have one and your ride has one
posted by pyramid termite at 9:13 PM on June 9, 2006

Summer 1970, and there was a massive fear campaign going on...
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:15 PM on June 9, 2006

i remember a story by jim morrison in one of his records about hitchhiking, getting into some kind of a hassle with the driver & ending up killing the guy. i kept wondering for many years if it was true
posted by growabrain at 9:18 PM on June 9, 2006

Manson wasn't the only one around that time ... Edmund Kemper and Herbert Mullin both killed female hitchhikers in Santa Cruz in the early 1970s.

When I was in middle school in the late 90s, our foreign-language textbooks (themselves from the early 90s, maybe?) still taught the vocabulary word for hitchhiking. Whether it is or was kosher in France, I don't know. That said, I know that one of the cardinal rules of being an exchange student on an AFS program is No hitchhiking.

I personally can't imagine hitchhiking. I also can't tell you the last time that I even saw a hitchhiker, but it's so firmly ingrained in me as something Young Women Shouldn't Do that I probably don't look for it. I wouldn't be surprised if my mother, who was a big skier out West in the early 70s, had done her share of hitching, but she sure never encouraged me to do it.
posted by anjamu at 10:13 PM on June 9, 2006

Just to chime in, My friend just hitchhiked across the US and back, and he wound up at gunpoint twice, and having one dude surprise him by suddenly being naked.
posted by shanevsevil at 11:09 PM on June 9, 2006

Response by poster: Interesting answers thus far.

growabrain : I believe the Jim Morrison story that you are referring to is the plot behind his (unfinished) movie HWY, which he later refers to in the song Riders On The Storm ("there's a kiler on the road, his brain is squirming like a toad....")

From what people say, it sounds like golden age of hitchiking in the US was back in the 1970s. I wonder if it was popular before then, like in the 20's and 30's?

I wonder if there is some sort of negative feedback loop at work, like : less people picking up hitchhikers -> less people hitchhiking -> people seeing less hitchhikers, and thus thinking that since so few people do it, the only people who do it are nuts and murderers -> less people picking up hitchhikers, etc.

I'm willing to bet that the death of hitchhiking in the US happened around the same time that a lot of things stopped being cool in this country. It seems that some time in the late 70's, everyone was like, "OK, we're just having too much fun here, something must be wrong." And then the Reagan Revolution, Just Say No, and the rise of the Religious Right happened. I bet a lot of it was fueled by the media (somebody mentioned Manson), although, for all I know, maybe there really were bad things going on, and all the backlash was justified. That was around the time that I was born, so obviously I lack perspective in this situation.

Back in my hippy-dippy days (that is to say, the mid-to-late 90s), I used to meet plenty of hitchhikers at Rainbow Gatherings. My impression was that kids could still ride their thumbs across the country, but the going was tough, and some of the people who would pick you up really *were* crazy. I think hitchhiking may have become more dangerous, possibly due to the aforementioned feedback loop.

Anecdotally, I lived on the Big Island of Hawaii back in '98 for a while. Around the Puna district, especially around Pahoa, hitchhiking was *really* common - like, young adults, teens, even children would do it. Of course, it was a pretty small community in a rather remote area, which would be concurrent with some previous comments in this thread.

I'm definitely interested in more stories and anecdotes, so please keep them coming.
posted by Afroblanco at 1:00 AM on June 10, 2006

The mean time to pick up between Quebec and Montreal is 10 minutes.
posted by gmarceau at 2:06 AM on June 10, 2006

My mother told me that my grandmother hitched back and forth across the U.S. twice, from one coast to the other. I believe this was sometime in the '30s.

My grandmother was also a taxi dancer at points in her life, and possibly had worked in a 'house of ill-repute' in Illinois, so I figure she was a fearless person in general (one could also say foolish, of course).

From what I understand bad things happened to hitchers back then, female hitchers in particular, but I never got a chance to interview her on the subject before she died.

Man, I wish I had.
posted by seancake at 2:09 AM on June 10, 2006

in big sur, kerouac describes hitchhiking in the early sixties as being a lot harder than it was in the 40's and 50's ... it's hard to tell from a series of novels, of course, but i think it may have been more common and socially acceptable in his road days than even the hippie era

i never had any bad vibes from the people that picked me up in the 70s although a few of the people who passed me by acted like assholes ... i always hated that thing where they would pull over and then take off

my last experience like that was 4 or 5 years ago when i was walking a couple of miles to a broken down car my ex had abandoned ... it was 10 degrees and i didn't have my thumb out but was just walking and a young woman offered me a ride anyway ... kind of surprised me

interesting that people haven't mentioned the most common bane of hitchhikers ... those who pick you up and start talking religion while handing you jack chick pamphlets
posted by pyramid termite at 5:33 AM on June 10, 2006

Last time my wife and I picked up a hitch-hiker he cheerfully admitted that he'd just been let out of jail. He was a nice guy and we didn't freak out but I'd suggest if you're hitching that's not the best way to start off the conversation...

I think it comes down to two words. Serial Killers. Two well-known serial killers, Ivan Milat in Australia and Fred West in the UK killed a number of hitchhikers.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:37 AM on June 10, 2006

Best answer: I wonder if the media image of "Only wierdos pick up hitchhikers/hitchhike" didn't create its own POSITIVE feedback loop. "Hmm. I'd like to murder/rape/assault/rob someone, but I don't know who... I keep hearing on the news that hitchhikers do that sort of stuff, maybe I should take up hitchhiking!"
posted by Rock Steady at 7:55 AM on June 10, 2006

I worked in Yellowstone National Park in 1986, and it was pretty common for other park employees to hitch from our location at Mammoth Hotsprings down to other locations in the park. Two of the people I worked with had hitched to Yellowstone to start work that summer, too.
posted by mph at 9:49 AM on June 10, 2006

My father used to hitchhike when he was younger and i can remember him picking up hitchhikers when I was a kid. That was until this conversation in the mid 80's:

Hitchhiker: What do you do for a living?

My dad: I am a computer programmer.

Hitchhiker: Oh? I have a computer! It talks to me and tells me to do things.

My dad: ........
posted by sideshow at 12:30 PM on June 10, 2006

I have an ultra-religious cousin who picks up hitchhikers (even when she's alone) on the basis that God will protect her. Once I was with her and she wanted to pick someone up, and I told her if she did, I would get out and walk. She didn't. I'm not taking the chance, myself.
posted by IndigoRain at 12:48 PM on June 10, 2006

In my wayward early-90s youth, I hitchiked from Lodi, California to Yosemite and back with my boyfriend. We were driving to meet some friends in Yosemite, but my boyfriend’s car (a banana yellow Ford Galaxie 500 convertible) broke down in Lodi. We didn’t want to be stuck in Lodi, so we decided to hitch. Got rides from a couple of normal folks, and a couple of scary folks. The most memorable was the sunburned traveling carpet salesman who drank about five beers in the hour we were driving with him. And the guy who menacingly shook us down for gas money.

In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea, but we really wanted to get to Yosemite.
posted by footnote at 1:31 PM on June 10, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks to all for your excellent answers and stories. I wonder if hitchhiking could ever make a comeback in the US, and what would need to happen in order to make that a reality.
posted by Afroblanco at 5:05 PM on June 10, 2006

I've picked up hitchers from time to time, I have a few spur of the moment criteria... #1, if you have a facial tattoo, or look like a gang member, I'm not even going to slow down. #2, if your clothes look dirty I'm not going to risk have a stinky dude in my car.

If I see a couple of female backpackers, I'll pick them up - I know I'm not going to rape & murder them, and dump their bodies in the bush. And if I see some people who are clearly doing the same thing I am, I'll think about it. For example, if I'm driving down from the mountain from a day of skiing and see a couple of dudes in snowboard boots and jackets waiting on the side of the road, I'll pick them up.

But I don't pick up many people. My partner won't let me these days. No one for severak years at least.

I've hitched in the past, when I was very young, but wouldn't even consider it now. (One time, I was picked up by an unmarked police car, they drove me straight to the ferry, quite fast. That was sweet.)

This is in New Zealand where we've had a few bad news stories over the years. Mostly with backpackers being picked up by bad dudes and raped/murdered. There are so many backpackers to bad news stories that I think the risks are very small. It's that same old thing of perceived risk versus real risk.

Oh, I just remember the last time I picked up a scruffy looking hobo guy, he turned out to have some sort of sickness, and gave it to me. Just a cold or something, fucker got in the car and immediately started coughing. So he obviously really needed the lift, but I really didn't need to get sick.
posted by The Monkey at 8:40 PM on June 10, 2006

One time, I was picked up by an unmarked police car, they drove me straight to the ferry, quite fast. That was sweet.

one time outside of traverse city, michigan, i was picked up by a guy who turned out to be an off duty ambulance driver ... he proceeded to drive down a rather busy highway ... (it was labor day weekend) ... at 85 to 90 mph ... at least once in passing, he missed an oncoming car by a few feet

that was a ride i could have probably done without ...
posted by pyramid termite at 9:41 PM on June 10, 2006

Best answer: I wonder if hitchhiking could ever make a comeback in the US, and what would need to happen in order to make that a reality.

One answer to this question is "Gasoline would need to be very, very expensive."

In France, where gas costs $6/gallon, it is not unusual for anyone of any age to hitchhike or pick up hitchhikers. It's a way to share resources.
posted by hyperfascinated at 12:59 AM on June 11, 2006

During my cross-country hitch, I rode past an Ohio State Highway Patrol car putting a couple of guys with backpacks out on the side of I-80 in the middle of nowhere. The guys had obviously just had their heads shaved. Later, a herd of us hitching near an overpass were corralled by several OSHP cars. I think what saved us from similar fates was the two French guys, who suddely couldn't understand English. The cops seemed to decide we were too much trouble, and just sent us off the highway onto some small local road. That was a slight education in itself - people mouthing "Oh my God" behind closed car windows, while locking the doors. (None of us had face tats or gang colors, or etc.) Ohio.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:03 AM on June 11, 2006

I hitched a lot from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s around the mid-Atlantic area, mostly between DC and North Carolina. The few times I've tried since then were hopeless -- nobody stops anymore.
posted by Rash at 9:35 AM on June 11, 2006

i hitchhiked for about 3 years in europe in the mid-70's, it was wonderful... about 2 weeks ago i picked up a guy in riverside, california.
you don't see many people needing a ride anymore.
posted by growabrain at 12:50 PM on June 11, 2006

My bro hitchhiked across europe a couple of times in the late 90s. And now that I think about it, I have a friend who has hitchhiked a 500km distance a couple times in the past year. From his stories, it was all pretty uneventful.
posted by jedrek at 5:24 PM on June 11, 2006

Hitchhiking is still legal in the state of Hawaii. And quite common. I love you Hawaii!
posted by zpousman at 7:00 AM on June 12, 2006