Am I a Hitchhiker?
…what would Mom say?
We’ve all been taught not to trust strangers. Growing up, my Mum taught me not to take sweets from strangers, in school we learned the phrase ‘Stranger Danger’, and were constantly reminded not to get into a car with a person we didn’t know. Today, as villages become towns, and towns become cities, our brains cannot cope with the number of daily interactions. The mechanism we have developed to manage that situation is anonymity; we restrict social interactions to only the most necessary while in busy places.
However, thanks to increases in smartphone ownership and the rise of online social and sharing tools, technology is allowing us to shirk our masks of anonymity and create virtual bubbles within these faceless cities, which emulate the trust and interactions from village communities of the past.
Hitchhiking, on the other hand, seemed to defy these social warnings. It became popular around the time of WWI when military personnel on leave would begin to hike along a roadside and stop to hitch a ride whenever a car passed. Even as recently as our parents’ generation, there was nothing more normal than hitching — it was cheap, you met interesting people, and low car ownership rates meant you often didn’t have any other travel option.
It was even showcased in movies back in the day of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. So, what happened in the past four decades that turned hitchhiking from a fun mode of transport into a wildly dangerous activity attempted only by thrill seekers, hippies, and bored eccentric movie moguls? Or, is that true at all?
Recently, I began causal carpooling. After some research, I found that there are over 12,000 people who casual carpool every weekday morning in the San Francisco Bay Area. Casual Carpooling is one of the simplest, most efficient forms of commuter transport I have seen — riders line up on the side of the road, drivers come along to the predetermined pickup point, two riders jump into the car, and a super-speedy city-bound carpool is formed.
Does that mean these people are hitchhikers? Does that make me a hitchhiker? I started wondering what the difference is between hitchhiking — that we are all so afraid of — and casual carpooling — used without incident by thousands of people every day?
Casual Carpool vs. Hitchhiking
Firstly, to put it in marketing terms, I am coming into this market as a laggard. Casual Carpooling has been tried and tested, I can observe the system working, talk to people who have used it, and be reasonably satisfied that I will not only get to work on-time, but also have a safe, pleasant experience en route.
Secondly, hitchhiking by its very nature is unorganized; it is opportunistic. Like the casual carpooler, the hitchhiker has a desired destination. However, their time schedule must be flexible, they tend to have longer journeys, and almost everything about it is unpredictable. In addition, the hitchhiker is generally a lone traveler — they do not have the support or sense of security a casual carpooler is afforded from joining a line of people, following someone’s lead, being part of a community.
Thirdly, we have been taught to fear the hitchhiking scenario. In the 1970s, both government and law enforcement in the US tried to reduce the number of ‘hippies’ and student protesters, who were considered an undesirable transient element, by limiting their mobility. Anti-hitchhiking campaigns, such as “Thumbs Down to Thumbers,” were released to inform people of the dangers of picking up a stranger, or getting in a car with one — they could be a con artist, felon, or rapist. Fear of hitchhiking spread rapidly and this, combined with an expanding interstate highway system that didn’t allow pedestrians, lead to the demise of the practice. Unfortunately, the ‘information’ provided by anti-hitchhiking campaigns was largely erroneous and by 1974, when the California Highway Patrol ran a study which showed that hitchhikers were not disproportionately likely to be victims of crime, the damage had already been done.
So, am I a hitchhiker?
Similar to a hitchhiker, I stand at the side of the road and get a ride with a stranger, but that is where the similarities end. Although casual carpooling is a grassroots movement not organized by any body or organization, it is an established system with norms, rules, and accepted behaviors. This is a daily activity for the majority of casual carpoolers and consequently the ‘shadow of the future’ regulates their behavior — in other words, I treat carpool partners well today in the hope that others will treat me with the same respect in the future. Although most people who hear of casual carpooling for the first time assume those using the system are crazy, irresponsible risk-takers who deserve any negative consequences stemming from their reckless actions, there have been no recorded incidents of crime within the casual carpooling community. So, the only consequences of the decision to partake in this system is a fast, comfortable, efficient commute. I’m not a hitchhiker, I’m a smart commuter.
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This blog was written in conjunction with www.carmacarpool.com
