Hitchhiking

Hitchhiking (also known as thumbing, autostop or hitching) is a means of transportation that is gained by asking individuals, usually strangers, for a ride in their car or other vehicle.

In 2011, Freakonomics Radio reviewed sparse data about hitchhiking, and identified a steady decline in hitchhiking in the US since the 1970s, which it attributed to a number of factors, including a greater lack of trust of strangers, lower air travel costs due to deregulation, the presence of more money in the economy to pay for travel and more numerous and more reliable cars.

Some British researchers discuss reasons[further explanation needed] for hitchhiking's decline in the UK, and possible means of reviving it in safer and more-organized forms.

[8] Since the mid-2010s, local authorities in rural areas in Germany have started to support hitchhiking, and this has spread to Austria and the German-speaking region of Belgium.

This support typically takes the form of providing hitchhiking benches (in German Mitfahrbänke) where people hoping for a ride can wait for cars.

These benches are usually brightly coloured and located at the exit from a village, sometimes at an existing bus stop lay-by where vehicles can pull in safely.

[20] In Israel, hitchhiking is commonplace at designated locations called trempiyadas (טרמפיאדה‎ in Hebrew, derived from the German trampen).

Travelers soliciting rides, called trempists, wait at trempiyadas, typically junctions of highways or main roads outside of a city.

Still, hitchhiking was part of the American psyche and many people continued to stick out their thumbs, even in states where the practice had been outlawed.