I hitchhiked regularly between 2010 and 2016, in the UK, northern Europe, all over Australia and New Zealand and about 3,000 miles in the US. With the exception of New Zealand, most people who picked me up told me that it was very difficult. It rarely was, even as a solo male. They also said it was dangerous. If that's true, I'm lucky. The worst experience I had was getting sunburned at a Memphis service station. The only country where nobody stopped for me was Sweden, but their rural bus service got me through.
I do. I am a 56-year-old woman from Aotearoa (New Zealand) and it is my long-distance travel mode of choice. In the late 80s and early 90s, all us unemployed, activist, artistic or studying folks did, as few could afford cars and many places here have limited public transport options. I was often on the road three or more days a week, usually alone, as my work involved organising performance art all over the country with no budget. No internet and expensive long-distance phone calls meant that communication options were mail or just turning up.
Some people said it wasn't safe, but there are simple precautions you can take: don't sit between men; don't get into cars driven erratically or by people who smell of alcohol; develop a connection. I have always knitted, meaning I am holding a harmless-looking weapon if needed. Anyway, almost everyone isn't a baddie - and you are just as likely to encounter villains in your street, home or workplace. I am always surprised by those who hitched in the past but now wouldn't want their children to.
Nowadays, I do it because I'm still poor, I'm still doing political performance and I really enjoy it. It's a form of mutual aid. The art of hitchhiking involves giving people what they want in a passenger, whether it is the satisfaction of helping someone out, sharing great conversation, or validating or challenging their ideas. I dress colourfully and interesting-but-not-weird - tartan is always good - and smile broadly. I am usually picked up within 10 minutes.
I am often the only hitchhiker on the road, when once I would need to walk past a line of others. When I am driving a car, I will pick up all others. If I have a choice, I'll take the big, scruffy, tattooed man with the dog over the perfectly matching blond backpackers, whom someone else will pick up. I find a small percentage are annoying - stinky, drunk or dishonest - but most are fine - but they're just people who need to get somewhere.
As a young man - I'm 81 now - I moved to London from Sunderland. To visit home, I often depended on hitchhiking. It usually worked well. When I got my first car, I returned the service and always picked up people. In those days, it was easy - roundabouts everywhere ensured an easy possibility for stopping briefly at the side of the road. Motorways have killed that option.
Also, attitudes have changed. I continue offering ride sharing through dedicated websites. Here in France, where I live, it works remarkably well; but it wouldn't work at all in the UK; comments from friends and family when I visit can be summarised as: "You won't get me in a car with someone I don't know." It's sad, as I have had mainly positive experiences in continental Europe: the occasional disagreeable passenger, but never any real problems.
Easy answer. Too many violent US movies about drivers picking up serial killers or meeting them in the Australian outback put everyone off trusting our fellow human beings. Much like the movie Jaws put lots of people off swimming in the sea for years. These movies make millions, but have nasty, long-running unintended consequences.
I blame Rutger Hauer. In 1986, The Hitcher marked the beginning of the end for hitchhiking!
I hitchhiked around Britain and continental Europe for years in the 1970s and there was always a queue of fellow hitchers at the beginning of every motorway. Then everyone got terrified of strangers. Tabloids printed stories about crazed hitchhikers who would attack you. The Yorkshire Ripper happened. Companies (especially in haulage) made it policy not to pick up travellers. So, no more lifts from lorry drivers or sales reps. In reality, the dangerous ones were often the ones offering the lifts, but I somehow got out of every dodgy situation. Most drivers were decent folk, often ex-squaddies who had hitched in their youth (and very rarely fellow hippies!). It is sad there is so little trust now, when there are so many single-occupant cars and so many people who cannot afford trains. I had some great adventures.
The last time I tried hitching (about 20 years ago, when my car broke down), rain was bucketing down and it was the middle of the night. An old lady stopped and wound down the window. Before I could thank her, she said: "Oh, I thought you were my son," and drove off. I yelled at her car: "I am somebody's son!" Ah well ...
I was a solo female hitchhiker around the UK and continental Europe for 10 years, although I was happy to travel with a partner, too. The familiar spots between Edinburgh and London are still recognisable to me. I was seventeen in '69, so the hippy spirit burned brightly around me and many people in the following decade understood and appreciated the main arguments in favour of hitchhiking. That made it a safe and, at times, enlightening experience. Lorry drivers and long-distance drivers with just the cab or car radio benefited from having company with someone who felt beholden - to be entertaining, or a good listener. The get-out clause was that we could easily be expelled at a service station along the way. The ever-increasing number of services were also places to catch some sleep or find a new lift, so they created a relaxed feeling of no obligation between hitchhikers and drivers.
I vividly - and fondly - remember being kissed and embraced by a Dutch driver in northern France about two in the morning when we’d arrived safely. Although we couldn’t understand each other in the slightest, we had chatted for hours, so he managed to drive and stay awake (and we both stayed alive).
Hitchhiking was mostly a byproduct of low pay and poverty. The young were poor and many more young people than today were poor across the classes. The standard of living was very low in the 1970s, witnessed by low car ownership, especially among young people; middle-class students neither received early inheritances nor handouts from mum or dad. The upper middle classes liked to keep their offspring "short" of cash; they were expected to make their own way.
Many older drivers understood that the young, like their own children, were hard-up. Many chose personally to share their own newfound freedoms of the road with them in vehicles they loved to drive. And it made them feel a bit superior to the new funky generation. During that decade, given low car ownership figures and new motorways across Europe, driving around was just so liberating and fun.
Car transport was liberating all over Europe as it opened up freedoms beyond rail - very expensive even then - and long-haul bus journeys. I did try buses twice across Europe and both experiences verged on manic: the first time to Paris with an aggressive driver who tried to fight with a passenger; and then from former Yugoslavia in dense fog with driver speeding recklessly for hours.
I've been hitchhiking in Britain for three years, writing a Substack and a book, Britain By Thumb, on the subject. It's a great shame so few of my generation practise the dying art. I've heard various theories as to why, ranging from the damage done by horror movies to our outsourcing of trust to apps.
I'd say the issue is more about hitchhiking's unpredictability. We're so used to knowing the exact minute at which we'll arrive that the prospect of standing in a layby for a potentially limitless amount of time, being given the middle finger by passing cars and then possibly getting murdered has put most off.
Of course, apart from the middle fingers, hitchhiking is not like that at all. I've caught hundreds of rides and I rarely wait more than half an hour. I've never once felt in danger (except for bad driving) and I've had many uplifting experiences that have made me more confident in who I am and more trusting of my fellow humans.
Having said all that, I met my first fellow hitchhiker in the wild the other day, at an A1 service station. She told me not to get my hopes up. She'd been waiting for a lift for three days ...
In the UK, hitching is way more difficult than it was when I did it a lot in the 70s. The hard shoulders on motorway slip roads and other main routes have been removed, so there is no safe place for drivers to pull over. Besides that, modern cars are just too fast and drivers do not have time to assess whether they want to stop for you. It is still possible on country roads, but again it is too dangerous, for the same reasons. I have more recently hitchhiked, but that was in the Pyrenees, where there is a custom of stopping for people due to the lack of local buses. A further reason for the paucity of hitchhikers is that long-distance buses (if not trains) are relatively cheap - in my day, we were all too poor. Also, look at university car parks; they are full. When I went to university in the 70s, only a handful of students out of 3,000 had cars.