Hitch Hiking is a term to describe having a stranger pick you up in their car to drop you off at another location. I wanted to know how common this is in your country as it is discouraged in my country due to fears of abduction and the concept of “stranger danger”.
18 comments
UK. I have never hitchhiked. I did pick up hitchikers once though. A young couple. I think that’s the only people who can do it. A single woman wouldn’t want to hitch hike, and a single man no one would pick up.
You mean, like holding your thumb out at a rest stop? Used to be common, when I was young. I actually did a couple of times, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw someone do this.
I did it a couple of times when I was growing up in the 90s/00s. Not to anywhere far, just a couple of KM down the road. I can’t remember the last time I saw a hitch hiker.
Auto stop ? Did it all of the time as scout and I haven’t been murdered apparently.
Today, there’s apps to do car sharing.
Auto stop is still a thing when you’re out in the mountains or the boonies as people sometimes get lost or miss the only bus of the afternoon and stuff.
Actual hitch hiking not so much. Occasionally I see one near rest stops on the highway but not on a daily basis. And even then its mostly craftsmen on the Walz (traditional travel after completing apprenticeship as a craftsman). Most people use services like BlaBlaCar for sharing a ride instead of actual hitch hiking.
I think most people would consider it dangerous eventhough safety is generally not a big concern in Germany
The only place I’ve seen it quite often was in Georgia/Sakartvelo back in 2019. My wife and I passed loads of hitch hikers, and we picked people up if we could. The only one I remember was an Estonian guy with a huge 80l backpack who was thru-hiking across Georgia. We picked him up about 10km outside of Mestia, and about 30 seconds later the heavens opened, so he was very appreciative.
It died when mobile phones became common.
Once everyone has a phone in their pocket there’s less reason to hitch.
The EU expansion also gave us criminals who pretended to be hitchhikers.
Some places you might obviously see a hitch hiker but it’s very rare these days.
Uncommon, but it happens. I think people mostly use ride-sharing apps these days. It was more common about 20 years ago, but then it was mostly backpackers, not local people.
Almost non existent.
The only times I’ve seen anyone try to hitch a ride is after big events like concerts. And the few people I’ve seen normally show a paper sign with their destination rather than just stick their thumb out.
Extremely rare these days, last time I picked someone up was a few years ago, he wasn’t even trying to cadge a lift, he was just walking along the road on Christmas Day, and was surprised when I stopped. He was a farm worker whose car had broken down and he was walking the few miles home.
I don’t think it’s particularly common, though it does happen and some places supposedly have “hitchhiker points” to make it easier and safer (though I haven’t seen one). I know that my parents and grandparents did it, but I have never personally seen a hitchhiker or tried it myself. It was discussed in the news some years ago, where around 50% of participants in a small poll said they would be uncomfortable and wouldn’t pick up a hitchhiker
I’m from finland. I have never hitchiked. I have seen like 2-3 hitchikers in my life here. Very much discouraged. But people do shared car rides with random people. It’s just agreed beforehands and they usually share gazoline money.
I only know two people who hitchhike (usually together). They’re from France and Germany and they’ve managed to go around the Balkans hitchhiking. Their plan for the summer holiday is to hitchhike to Istanbul. I don’t know how they feel safe doing it. They’re two 18 year old girls, alone, their only family across the continent, they’ve never been to the cities they hitchhike to so they wouldn’t know if the stranger who picked them up started taking them somewhere else. I’d be terrified and I think they’re insanely reckless for doing this but they don’t listen to anyone’s advice to stop.
Not at all, and I find it a bit sad.
I’m an immigrant and my passport countries had a strong hitch-hiking culture when I was growing up. I hitch-hiked across Europe when I first got to the continent and it was pretty cool, especially in Serbia.
There are surprisingly few serial killers cruising the highways hoping to see a random hitch-hiker.
I’ve hitchhiked once, when I was doing my military service and I was getting back to the barracks from a weekend leave and my father’s car broke down while going to the bus pickup location.
Nice grandma picked me up and said that since I was wearing the army greens she dared to do so. It would have been a real shitshow if I had missed the transportation.
Not very common, but not completely unheard of. I’ve picked up hitchhikers once on my own; two young women from France (I believe) who were hitchhiking their way North. I’ve also given a girl (maybe 15?) a ride into town because I went to check on her when spotting her waiting at a bus stop on a day I was fairly confident there would not, in fact, be a bus stopping. Driving with friends we’ve picked up young men hitchhiking a couple of times. (The genders throughout are more coincidental)
I’ve hitchhiked once myself in a group of three girls, but just a couple of kilometers we would otherwise have been walking home from the store. I’ve also caught rides with strangers a couple of times more accidentally. (Once I slipped and fell on the ice heading to work. Got up. Slipped again. A woman stopped to ask whether I was ok and ended up driving me the last distance rather than worrying about me getting seriously hurt. That was a bit embarrassing, but appreciated)
Used to be the default way for young people to travel, for students to go to their home village on a weekend.
It’s not a thing anymore because social media exists, people arrange a ride beforehand so there’s no need to stand on the side of a highway. There are dedicated groups for every imaginable route across the country.
There are Facebook groups where people organize to go on similar routes while sharing the costs.
Although, for some reason, you’d never see a hitchhiker on the road that you can pick up “on the spot”.
Sweden is everything opposite to having impromptu collaborations, discussions or meetings of any sort. Things would need to be planned in advance and people would have vetted each other by stalking each other on social media and population register directories a bit, before they can trust others.
Unless you meet someone through another friend, then it’s different.