Hitchhiking facts for kids
Hitchhiking is a way to end travel from place to place in someone else's car or lorry. Usually, a hitchhiker (a person who hitchhikes) will stand at the side of a road and hold his or her thumb in the air waiting for a passerby to come and pick her or him up. This is a sign that he or she wants to go somewhere else.
It was a very common way of traveling in Europe in the 1970s until people started to go missing. It is common for people to encounter dangerous people while hitchiking, it is not always clear when being picked up if a person is dangerous, and this make it very dangerous and has made it less popular.
Because of this, hitchhiking is illegal or restricted in many country’s and states of America.
Images for kids
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A man and woman hitchhiking near Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1936, photograph by Walker Evans
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A typical hitchhiker's gesture
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Mitfahrbank with destination signs in Flensburg]]Since the mid-2010s, local authorities in rural areas in Germany have started to support hitch-hiking, and this has spread to Austria and the German-speaking region of Belgium. The objectives are both social and environmental: as ridesharing improves mobility for local residents (particularly young and old people without their own cars) in places where public transport is inadequate, thus improving networking among local communities in an environmentally friendly way. This support typically takes the form of providing hitch-hiking 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. Some are even provided with large fold-out or slide-out signs with place names allowing hitchers to clearly signal where they want to go. Some Mitfahrbänke have been installed wth the help of the EU's LEADER programme for rural [[local development
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Two men tramping in Jerusalem
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Hitchhiking (called liften) is legal in the Netherlands. This sign suggests a good place to get a lift.
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A "slug line" of passengers waiting for rides in the US
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Two WPA workers hitchhiking in California, circa 1939
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Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable attempt to hitchhike in It Happened One Night.
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See also
In Spanish: Autoestop para niños
