Hitchhiking or thumbing or hitching is a truly unique form of traveling and continues to be popular in some places around the world.
Yet essentially, you’re asking people, usually strangers, for a ride in their automobile, a situation that has the potential for trouble, depending on your personal experience.
Hitchhiking across Europe, for instance, has been romanticized for decades and remains a method of travel that many young Americans have used to “find themselves” while seeing the sights over the years.
As years passed, hitchhiking began to lose its appeal, especially with millennials, but it does still occur.
In 2011, the front man for rock band U-2, Bono and his assistant were spotted trying to thumb a ride in Vancouver. The two had reportedly gone out for a walk just before a downpour began when Gilbert Brule an Edmonton Oiler hockey center and his girlfriend pulled over to offer him a ride.
Hitchhiking has been portrayed in a variety of different ways in Hollywood. In the movie Dumb & Dumber, Jim Carrey says, “We usually don’t pick up hitchhikers. Buuuttt I’m gonna go with my instinct on this one. Saddle up partner!”
Hitchhiking may restore one’s faith in humanity and allow people to travel for free, but most hitching scenes in Hollywood don’t turn out so well. As a parent and a safety and a risk management professional, I would equate it with dancing outside in a lightning storm while holding a metal rake towards the sky.
If you have ever driven by a prison you may have seen signs that read: “Prison Next Exit: Don’t Pick Up Hitchhiker,” which served as my first warning during my youth. In fact, history shows there have been multiple serial killers who have used our highways to find their next victims.
Hitchhiking as a woman can be easier than for a man. Often times, women stop for other females. It’s been said that even families or other usually-not-hitchhiker-friendly car owners will stop to “save” women if they think she could be in danger.
Unlike most families, my father would often pick up total strangers as a means to spread the gospel, witnessing to them about his love of Jesus Christ. I could sit in the back seat of our family vehicle and like clockwork, I could predict when my father would steer the conversion to get to his objective.
As a passenger, I always had mixed thoughts about such practices, respecting him for faithful service, but also questioning his judgment for possibly putting the family at risk. After all, didn’t escaped convicts always hitchhike?
But he would always quote scripture as to why we would be safe.
During this same time, a close friend in elementary school lost his older sister after she and another girlfriend decided to go hitchhiking across town and hopped into a drunk driver’s vehicle. He would later crash head on into a tree on Mason Headley Road here in Lexington.
So as a risk management-minded Christian today, I look at hitchhikers in a different light, cautiously selecting only those who appear to be in trouble or distressed, rather than the transients with a travel bag, hoping the good Lord will send somebody else to help them.
When riding without the family, I have often picked people up if they seemed to be in trouble, like the man I passed walking from his pickup truck, which was out of gas. It was 105 degrees last summer along I-75.
I later learned that he left a wife and a two-week-old baby behind in the truck’s cab, was out of money and trying to make it back home to Michigan from Florida.
If I hadn’t stopped I hate to think how long they would have been stranded on the side of the road in that heat without water. Not one to carry cash, I filled his tank with my debit card and gave him a safety speech about heat stress and then let my good deeds speak for my Christian beliefs.
Still, the culture of hitchhiking in the United States has changed dramatically and studies show it has dropped to new lows. But hitchhiking will always be an option for young runaways and people who want to travel long distances and don’t have much money.
Today, there are websites such as www.hitchwiki.org which are designed to educate people about being safe while hitchhiking. In fact there are entire communities of people online who use one another’s experiences to get people from point A to point B and they even hold hitch-gatherings worldwide.
As these communities of hitchhikers try to remain active, the practice has begun to die off with the invent of the internet, smartphones and ride-sharing apps.
Today, with advanced notice, you can be picked up at the front door out of the rain and taken to a destination, which offer some of the virtues of hitching but in an organized and digital kind of way. Yes, you lose that level of serendipity that you get while hitchhiking, but is more predictable and much safer.
If you find yourself broken down on the side of the highway or just traveling to “find yourself,” and you have that adventurous gene, here are a few tips to keep you safe if you need to hitch a ride:
• If broken down, call 911 for help and wait for assistance to arrive.
• Avoid traveling alone if possible and always travel with a fully charged cell phone with a working charger. Store emergency numbers like AAA or a nearby relative or friend that can come to your aid.
• Unless you are in extreme danger or in extreme heat, remain in your vehicle with the doors locked if you are broken down, but only if you are parked safely off the side of the road. If not, exit the vehicle and sit safely away from the shoulder.
• Put reflective triangles behind your vehicle to alert other drivers; use your emergency flashers. If it is dark, turn on the interior dome light.
• If somebody stops to assist, it’s always best to wait for for help if it’s on the way. But if you do decide to catch a ride, use your phone to snap a picture of the person and/or the license plate of the vehicle and send it to somebody. All Good Samaritans will understand. If questioned, inform the stranger that you are doing this for your own safety, if that presents a problem, then walk away.
• Always go with your gut instinct. If you get a bad vibe about a certain situation steer clear.
• Never get in the vehicle of a Good Samaritan if you smell alcohol or can tell the would-be helper is under the influence.
• It’s probably safest not to not go with more than one person in the car.
• Never pick up a hitchhiker near jails or prisons.
• If you do feel compelled to try hitching a ride with your thumb, remain safely off onto the shoulder of the road and try to wear reflective clothing.
• When you decide to get into the car, make sure there is an interior working door handle and be certain you know how to open the door in case of emergency. A good way to find it out is not to close the door correctly when you enter the car. That provides you with a reason to re-open it before the car is moving.
• If you have a smart phone, map out your current location with the phone’s GPS system to see if the driver is heading in the right direction to get you to your destination or if he has taken an unnecessary detour. You can also look for other possible stops if you become uncomfortable by requesting a bathroom break to vacate the vehicle.
• A nice way of getting out of a car without offending the driver is to pretend that you’re going to be sick. Tell the driver not to wait and move quickly away from the road.
• Remember, trust no stranger regardless of how friendly they seem. Never let your guard down, stay aware of your surroundings, know where you are at all times. Especially don’t fall asleep.
• If hitching, and there are other houses or people in sight, you can wave to them or pretend to say goodbye to a friend. The driver will think that somebody has seen you getting into the car.
• Don’t use pepper spray while the car is in motion. Blinding the driver will probably result in a crash.
Be Safe My Friends.
Keven Moore works in risk management services. He has a bachelor’s degree from University of Kentucky, a master’s from Eastern Kentucky University and 25-plus years of experience in the safety and insurance profession. He lives in Lexington with his family and works out of both the Lexington and Northern Kentucky offices. Keven can be reached at kmoore@roeding.com.
