Читать книгу A Practical Guidebook for Free Travellers. Translated from Russian by Peter Lagutkin - Антон Кротов - Страница 10

Spot is a key concept in hitch-hiking – and your success will largely depend on your ability to find good ones. A driver spotting you occupying a good spot will find it easy and comfortable to pick you up, and it’ll happen soon. But if your spot is bad, you may have to wait for several hours and see hundreds of cars pass by and not a single one stop for you.

Good spots can be few and far between, so even a couple of kilometres’ walk can be worthwhile if it takes you to the spot where you won’t have to wait for long. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to get off ten or twenty km ahead of your current vehicle’s final destination, because then the good spot will advance you a hundred or two kilometres, and soon.

The worst places to be at for a hitch-hiker are: bridges, tunnels, overpasses, «No stopping» signs, steep slopes, and inhabited localities. Choosing to hitch-hike in any of these places, you dramatically reduce the percentage of vehicles willing to stop for you. Neither is it advisable to hitch-hike at a bus stop, because the drivers may mistake you for a waiting commuter.

Narrow portions of the road with heavy traffic are bad for safety reasons. When you hit one of those, better walk ahead and look for a clearing, even if it means standing at a bus stop.

Now let’s talk about good spots. Roads have features, i.e., places where drivers will slow down and be more cautious than usual. These include: 1) traffic control stations, international borders, and customs control; 2) junctions; 3) railway crossings; 4) major road defects (such as a gravel patch interrupting regular bedding); 5) traffic lights; and some others.

Such features are vital for you. Standing ahead of one is non-productive: the driver’s attention is concentrated on the trouble ahead, not on the hitch-hiker, so practically nobody will stop to pick you up ahead of a traffic police station, for example. And almost no one will pick you up right ahead of a junction, because they won’t understand which way you want to go.

However, standing past such places, your chances to flag something down increase dramatically. Therefore, you should choose a spot some twenty or thirty metres past the feature (police station, railway crossing, junction, gravel patch…), not walk any further and wait for your hitch-hiking success. If you see a sequence of features, walk past all of them. If you’re in a hilly area, which happens a lot, then choose one hill and stand on top of it – that will make you visible from afar and the speed of passing vehicles will be minimal. Standing in between two hills or on a slope – not a good idea!

It’s also good to stand on a curve where drivers have to slow down, especially on a mild left-hand curve (where a hitch-hiker is seen from far away; whereas on a right-hand curve he will be seen abruptly, as if pouncing on you from around the corner). For safety reasons, though, it is a bad idea to flag down vehicles on road curves in winter, when there can be ice on the road.

(In countries with left-side driving, of course, the right-hand curve possesses above-described beneficial qualities. By the way, use your left hand to hitch-hike there!)

When I try to get a lift, with not too much traffic around and general situation looking normal, and see there’s no reaction and no vehicles stop for me – it means I’ve chosen the wrong spot. Then it makes sense to take a break, walk a kilometre or two, or three; there could be a junction or police station ahead.

At a good spot, the driver: 1) can see you from far away; 2) is not distracted or frightened by anything else (police, peddlers, other hitch-hikers); 3) can pull over and not be in the way of other vehicles.

Many European countries prohibit hitch-hiking on expressways. Go to a petrol station or toll booth and wait for a car; or talk directly with the drivers. This practice does not apply in ex-USSR because there are (almost) no proper expressways yet.

If you hitch-hike at night and don’t have a torch, you need a well-lit spot. In dark clothes and with no lights around, you might not be run over by a car, but won’t achieve hitch-hiking success either.