When’s the last time you saw someone on the side of the road, thumb hoisted within the air, waiting for a ride from a stranger? The practice of hitchhiking has significantly declined since its heyday within the Nineteen Seventies, when teenage hippies bummed rides across the U.S. to spread peace, love, and cigarettes.
It may very well be the recent rise in true crime podcasts, the safety guarantees of third-party services like Uber and Lyft (which could themselves be shadier than they appear), the physical risks of stopping on the highway, or a bunch of other reasons which have earned hitchhiking a fame for being each dangerous and illegal, and as of late you rarely see anyone trying to catch a free ride.
Most states have (often vague) legal parameters on hitchhiking; typical language includes “nobody may stand inside the roadway of a highway … for the aim of soliciting a ride” (Vermont) or “No one shall stand on a highway for the aim of soliciting a ride” (Idaho). But what about soliciting from the side of the road? Even in states which have seemingly stricter “anti-hitchhiking laws,” there’s still some ambiguity — take Nevada, for instance. Its state code prohibits pedestrians from walking “along and upon an adjoining highway” when sidewalks are provided, and individually says “an individual shall not stand in a highway to solicit a ride.” So technically, you may still have the ability to solicit a ride from the side of a highway with no sidewalk. No wonder hitchhiking looks like a legal gray area.
Where is hitchhiking legal?
Hitchhiking within the U.S. may be traced back nearly so far as the automotive industry itself. Through the Great Depression, hitchhiking was a life-saver for individuals who couldn’t afford cars. Hitchhiking became a counterculture hallmark within the ’60s and ’70s, with teenagers clamoring to go away ’50s suburbia behind. The practice was romanticized in popular culture, and memoirs have been written in regards to the unique experience of seeing the nation from the highway.
By the mid-’70s, though, hitchhiking began declining as automotive ownership rose and law enforcement increasingly warned of its dangers. A number of hitchhiking-related murders were swept up by the media after which Hollywood around the identical time, further tarnishing the practice’s former fame as generous and compassionate. Today, the practice is sort of obsolete within the U.S. Yet obsolete and illegal are two various things. There isn’t any federal law prohibiting hitchhiking, and laws about it vary state by state.
Hitchhiking is fully legal in some states, including South Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah. Most other states which have legal parameters for soliciting rides implement something like California’s law, which says “No one shall stand in a roadway for the aim of soliciting a ride from the motive force of any vehicle,” implying that hitchhiking is legal from the side of the road. Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Georgia, and plenty of other states use nearly equivalent language to set parameters on hitchhiking but keep it legal.
Even a stricter state like Maine, which generally prohibits hitchhiking, makes allowances for it if illness or accident creates an emergency. So in case your primary reservation about hitchhiking was its legality (or lack thereof), you are in luck — in most states, there’s ample legal room to position yourself for a free ride.
This Article First Appeared At www.jalopnik.com
