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Hitching is alive and well in scotland. I live just North East of Inverness, and quite often stop to pick up someone in our village (who I dont know) its usually older teanagers, saving the bus fare into town, and my attitude is if they were my kids, I'd want someone nice picking them up!!

I hitched a fair amount in the 1990's and was always surprised by the diversity of people willing to stop and give me a ride. I counted all my hitches and on the 100th gave the person a small bottle of champagne.

I've not hitched for 10 years, but as a broke student, I used to use it as a means of getting about the country. I rarely encountered anyone else hitching, but if you were reasonably patient, you could get around and I met some interesting people along the way - a lot of sleep deprived junior doctors, a rock band from Cambridge, dog breeders from Glasgow.

And I would concur with your mixed-gender theory. From my experience, hitching with a woman was easier, hitching solo slows you down and hitching with another man can leave you standing by the side of the road a long time

As for scary lifts, yes there were occasions when I was terrified - of dying in a car crash, not of being hacked to death by a lone nut.

I fly a paraglider as a hobby, and a such we occasionaly fly away from where we started from and left our cars.
This I do in the grampian region of Scotland where public transport is well, infrequent to say the least, se we really rely on either our friends or hitching to get back for our cars.
It is fair to say that while we may look like hill walkers with all our gear, we will eventually get a lift. You tend to find its the local gamekeeper ,farmer, younger people or a lorry driver on holiday and in older cars. Other tourists with their families very rarely give you a lift and if they do they are couples or other outdoor enthusaists, (maybe why younger people). Generally they are easy going and will go a few miles out of their way to help out. As far as the economics of hitching well one of the guys got a 20 mile lift in an Aston Martin.
As for giving hitches we have a large seasonal fruitpicking influx in our area and from time to time i have given them a lift if I am off into town. On eof the best we did was in Croatia where took a women 25 miles up the coast to her families farm and when we dropped her off we were given our lunch, they couldn't speak english and I couldn't speak croat.
It is maybe more prevelant up here as there isn't the public transport about and people appreciate the occasional difficulties of getting about.

I always used to stop and pick up hitchhikers - particularly when travelling alone, it was nice to have the company, as well as feeling like I was using my fortunate position of having a car to help out someone else who didn't.

In the last 6 or 7 years, I think I've only picked up one - I just don't see them around any more. Also, when on long journeys these days, I tend to have a car full of kids and no spare seats, which wasn't the case back then!

While I think Evan is right that "the proportion of weird and dangerous nutters is surely fairly constant over time", I suspect peoples fear of them is more exaggerated now than it used to be.

I hitched for the first time in Iceland this summer and I have to say I had a great time. It was a wonderful way to meet local people. I met everyone from a CEO of a supermarket to a student who ran his car on 50% chip fat.

What was curious to me was as a rational person it made me feel superstitious about matters of luck. I also realised how my appearance or even expression could effect potential lifts. Generally I found that it is not possible to get a lift in the centre of a town - there are just too many cars. You have to walk a bit out of town - that way you have more of a target to focus on and the drivers are less distracted. I think they also measure how 'deserving' you are this way. Likewise the route also becomes less ambiguous to the driver.

Although I thought I might be a bit of a sponger at first, I found people were more than happy to pick me up, often for their own reasons. Some were simple acts of kindness - particularly in more remote places - but often people wanted to break their journey and have someone to take with in order to interrupt the boredom of driving.

Perhaps if we made more long distance journeys rather than short to the shop type trips, hitching would be more common? Hitching too was also as utopian as the motorways - a possibility thrown up by this new style of transport. For most of us, the possibilities of the motorway have dissolved into a dreary everyday experience, rather than something new. Almost universal use of the car has ironed out the contrast.

A couple of years ago I hitchhiked to Morocco for charity with two of my friends whilst at uni. We weren't nearly as successful as other groups doing it, mainly because we travelled as a group of 3 guys, and it took us 8 days! We encountered hitchers all over Europe, where it still seems to be alive and well. Before then I would have never picked up a hitcher, I suppose partly through fear and partly because I would've felt they were spounging off of me. But since I did it I have wanted to pick one up just to help them out, but I haven't seen one in the UK for over two years!

From experience, I can tell you it would have taken a lot longer were it not for the fact you had a young lady with you, if you made it at all. When I was at university (15 years ago) I hitched quite a bit. On my own, I could wait up to 40 minutes for a lift. I once went to Leeds with a tall, blond flat-mate and our feet had barely touched the ground before the next lorry driver offered us a lift.

As a student in the 1960s I used to hitch-hike a lot as I could not afford fares and did not drive. I always found it a friendly experience with some people going out of their way to help me. In rural areas it was unlikely that you would have to wait more than a few minutes for a lift as everyone knew there was no other means of transport.
When I started driving myself, especially on long journeys, I would always hope that I would pick up a hitch-hiker. This was usually the case until the 1980s. It is a shame that it is not so prevalent now as it was a simple means of a dirver havng company and a hitch-hiker being helped along the way.
I remember one foreign hitch-hiker who puzzled me for a while when he kept making reference to hi-chicken and how good is was in Britain. I was almost tempted to take him to a KFC.

The absence of hitchers on the roads since the early 90's may be in part explained by by greater access to wealth and therefore to other means of travel but that is only a small part of the picture. We now inhabit a society that is more fearful and less trusting of other people. I don't believe for a minute that hitching or giving lifts is any more dangerous now than it was 20 years ago, but people perceive it as such and would rather stay hermetically sealed in their cars and not let the dangerous outside world inside. Furthermore, successful hitching is predicated on drivers being generous and enjoying the company of others - it could simply be that nowadays we are less ready to offer kindness to strangers.
When I used to hitch in the 80's and 90's, I positively looked forward to owning a car so that I could pick up hitchers myself and repay the kindness that I had been shown so many times (including offers of somewhere to sleep, meals with the family etc.,) . Problem is that there's no-one to offer a lift to now....

I loved the interview on the show this morning and generally also agree with Evan's theories about demand rather than supply drying up. I used to hitch hike all over Britain and Europe in the 60's and 70's, clocking up about 30,000 miles in the time. This was generally out of choice although, in my teenage years, for economic reasons too - although the introduction of Eurorail passes in the early 70's changed that a bit. There were many amazing people I met; discovered some interesting driving styles - not all entirely safe; and received wonderful hospitality on many occasions. If there's space in the car nowadays I'll always stop to offer a lift - but have only seen a handful hitch hikers in about the last two years. The debate about living in a more fearful society in the 21st. century certainly applies to this subject.

I carried out a similar experiment about 2 years ago. (though sample size of 1 cant be statistically tested!)

In this case I was visiting my parents and decided on a free day I would hitchhike from their house to Belfast which is about 25 miles away. This is something that I hadnt done in over 10 years.

I found that things hadnt really changed. The journey took me about 50% longer than if I had borrowed my parents car, which from my experiences previously is about par for the course.

What had changed were perceptions. A number of drivers did start with "I dont usually pick up people any more" or "Its strange to see someone hitchhiking now". There was definitely a novelty factor to it now.

I concur with the idea of "Adverse selection" that Evan put forward and it could well be the main reason that hitchhiking has declined.

I would like to hear if Evan has ever done it before and would he care to comment on changes (though bringing a producer and photographer along does tend to skew the scenario!)

Like many other contributors I enjoyed my hitchhiking as a student but agree that , in . general , there are fewer hitchhikers around these days to allow me to repay my debt to society. Luckily I live near a car auction site where there are often drivers with trade plates hitching to collect their next car to bring back to the auction. In Germany there is the 'Mitfahrgelegenheit' which attempts to match hitchhikers with car drivers. The hitchhiker and driver agree a pick up place , time and cost.
As contact details are known it reduces some of the risks but at the expense of the spontaneity of true hitchiking.

I think they did very well! Longest wait twenty minutes?! I can remember sitting with my girlfriend at the time at a deserted motorway junction in the baking heat for three hours, before finally getting a lift in the back of a stinking fish van - and that was twenty years ago, long before 'The Hitcher'.

One thing to note - when motorway hitching, always hitch from / ask to be dropped at services rather than junctions: people are more inclined to pick you up as they are just setting out again, and if the worst happend and you get stuck there for hours at least you have a cafeteria and toilets!

Hitched a lot on 80's as teenager.

Mixed experiences, from the lift by a Bristol womens hockey team (happy days) to encounters with some really creepy bloke (get your 'kin hand off my leg!)

No real problems but sometimes was glad to get out of the car.

Now have kids of my own and would probably be ok with the lad doing it when he is older with some tips from me but no way should a woman on her own try it.

This exercise seems a bit pointless. Evan is a familar face so people would be far more likely to offer him a lift than they would a total stranger. A far more realistic picture of the state of hitching today would have been achieved if a researcher, whose face wasn't familar to the public, had been sent out to do the piece.

I'm so pleased to read that Lisa Manwaring was well shaved as well on your hitch-hiking trip- I presume you're referring to legs and/or brazilian?

Sorry - I meant Nina not Lisa - apologies.

Fabulous topic on the Today show. It was the only means of travelling to Poland 22 years ago to see my then Girlfriend and now Wife. We travelled to Greece, Italy and France by Thumb and met some wonderful people, one who we keep in touch with even now. It still gives me great pleasure and rolling of eyes from my kids when i show them my name still scratched in the arco barrier in one of the services outside Frankfurt. I haven't seen a hitchhiker in years though and would certainly stop and help them on the way. I found Hitchhiking such a social activity and really honed my conversational skills.

Never hitched in this country, but hitched all around NZ...which many people compare to the UK 30 years ago in terms of attitude and generosity.

I had a fantastic time and met many people who might have otherwise drifted past unnoticed: the butcher who enthusiastically rearranged the slaughtered sheep on the back seat of his car to make space for me; the burley, vest-wearing, tattoo-sporting lumberjack who insisted on getting out of his car for a cig because I was a non-smoker; the weekend hunter with a stag's head strapped to the roof of his land rover (ok, he was never going to drift past unnoticed); and the guy who...err...had a shotgun rattling around next to me on the backseat!

I can tell you one thing - I can remember every person who gave me a lift. I can't say the same about the places they gave me lifts to...

In the late 70s and through the 80s I hitched everywhere. Initially as a student I couldn't afford to get around any other way. Later on it became something of a habit - it was in some ways more relaxed than any other form of transport and I enjoyed the people I met along the way. Sometimes (uhm, getting anywhere from Thingeyri airport in Iceland, or into central New Hampshire to see "the Fall" after the last tour of the day had already set off) it was the only way of moving at all.

At some point in the 80s - I forget exactly when - there was a high profile news story about a violent incident involving a hitchhiker. I no longer remember which party was the aggressor, which the victim. The Thatcher government stepped in and made easy capital over this, bemoaning a society of unwashed freeloaders in which such evil could thrive. Hitching became much less common around then, prime sites where once you had to queue until it was your turn to stick your thumb out (the M5 Gordano Services stick in my mind) now deserted. My personal hitching tale dried up a while later with the advent of young children, with whom this method of getting about would have been decidedly impractical.

Ah, you think of 20 minutes as a long wait? Believe me sunshine, that's nothing, I'd guess you were getting instant lifts for the novelty value. Six hours on Spaghetti Junction (March 11th 1979), now that's more like it. And this was always the risk. Gloriously, on the afternoon of midsummer's eve 1983 two of us set out from Reading aiming for the Stonehenge festival. By the time it got dark we were still less than ten miles from where we'd started, so we pitched camp and took the first bus home in the morning. But every other journey I attempted over the years I did complete, that day, if not in time for tea.

On a practical note: the hitching sign. You should always - as you did - have a prominent sign when you hitch. The destination on the sign isn't important as you tend to be flexible about your route once you find out where a driver is actually header, so it should just be sufficient to filter out everyone who's turning off three miles down the road. The main point of the sign is that allows you to write, very large, the word "PLEASE".

I don't suppose the fact that Evan Davies is a well known ´óÏó´«Ã½ presenter and was accompanied by a cameraman increased his chances of being offered a lift did it?! He should disguise himself as a scally and wear a hidden camera and then see how many people pick him up!

As you say, people prefer more reliable forms of transport that they can afford. A major and remarkable change since the 1970s is that transport is now so much better marginally-priced. If I have a snap business appointment in Manchester I can get a first class train ticket there for £180. But if I know I can fix a specific Saturday morning train and book a week ahead I can get a cheap fare for £12.50. The same goes for airlines. Technology has helped transport companies fit fares to the (in)convenience acceptable to their passengers.

By contrast, surely the demand to pick up hitch-hikers should still be there? Many of us like company to relieve the monotony of long road journeys and I can't believe we are really all terrified of strangers. It does look like it's a supply-side problem.

could this sucess be related to been well known by the general public from various television appearance perhaps?

Like Dan_Scho I hitched my way to Morocco, for charity, earlier this year and had great fun doing it, met some lovely and helpful people including a couple who fed us and put us up for the night in Barcelona and a guy who strapped all his possessions to the roof of his ancient Renault 4 so we could fit in. I was with two girls which I think was a big help in terms of getting lifts, made us seem a lot less scary. I would have been wary about picking up hitchers before, but now I always keep an eye out, unfortunately you just don't see many about.

An alternative is lift-sharing websites - travelling to a music festival recently I had space in my car so I put the details on a website and was soon contacted by someone in my area who needed a lift to the same festival - made my journey less boring and I made a good friend, all in all a great idea.

As a young woman in the 80s, I hitched a great deal, much of the time alone. Armed with a motorcycle helmet (many bikers will give lifts but few carry spare lids) and a paper disc from a trucker's tachograph (truckers would stop for these, trade plates could be carried in a similar way) I had a good time and met lots of interesting people. Riding with a trucker I could borrow his CB to set up my next ride.

The only rides to be wary of were those from some middle-aged men alone in company saloon cars, who seemed to think that giving a lift to a woman entitled them to some sort of personal service.

I agree with nicklevine on the long waits. I recall giving up for a bit because there were no lifts and opting to have a nap under a nearby bush, only to be woken by the police who had received a report of a 'body under a tree'. These things happen when you're stuck at the same roundabout for hours.

I suspect that most people don't hitch any more because our society has become increasingly lazy and hitching takes effort. The kind of person who takes their car half-a-mile to buy a pint of milk is going to find hitching a dreadful grind.

Here on Vancouver Island, hitching is quite common even if illegal. I regularly pick up hitch hikers of all all ages.

Like several people here I hitched a lot as a student in the late 70's and early 80's.

I too had predominantly enjoyable experiences during my time hitch-hiking (though having to sleep in an empty platic fertilzer bag in a field in the middle of march on my way through the Fylde was not necessarily top amongst them!)

Undoubtedly economics played a part in the popularity of hitch-hiking - though buses and trains weren't hugely expensive back then (cheap deals were available and buses have always been a relatively cheap means of transport).

I think, though, 'student ethos' (as it seemed to be mainly students who were hitching, in my experience) and fashion played a bigger part in the acceptability and adoption of hitching.

Hitch-hiking had the aura of 'adventure' around it and it was an acceptably 'studenty' thing to do - almost a 'right of passage'.

I suspect that, on the one hand, hitching, these days, is regarded as both a bit 'stupid' (because its 'dangerous') and a little 'geeky' - in this image and status conscious era.

On the other - that what quenches the thirst for 'adventure' (amongst students at least) these days has become more ambitious with the advent of low cost air fares and our ever-shrinking world.

I hitched regularly in the early 90's between the Lake District for holidays, Keele Uni where I studied and Hampshire where I lived (as well as one or two cross-European trips). I rarely stopped for more than 5 minutes and found that despite saving a small fortune in transport costs most of the time my journey was QUICKER than public transport.

The skill in hitching is always identifying where suitable spots are - most service stations are good - but there are some bad ones ('off road' services at junctions where traffic is mainly heading the wrong way). A little time studying a map and considering likely traffic flows paid off every time. After a few years I felt like I knew every inch of the M6!

After getting a job and buying a car I picked up a few hitchers going up and down the A34/M40/M6 - and on one occasion gave the same guy a lift north one weekend and south the following without any prior arrangement!

I've lived here in Brisbane Australia for 10 years now and havent seen a single hitcher in all that time - sad really.

I hitched occasionally in the 80's and 90's, including hitching from Ancona in Northern Italy to Sheffield, via Amsterdam and Denver, Colorado to New York. I'm not sure that 20 minutes on the side of the road counts as a "long weight". I met many great poeple along the way.

I think one of the biggest reasons for the demise in hitching is the rise in low cost travel. Perhaps not low cost airlines or the train, but low cost coach services make the money saved by hitching minimal.

When young I hitched a great deal abroad and, when friends visiting from abroad wanted to explore England, in this country too. Later, I would pick up hitchhikers and met loads of interesting people. In Nigeria friends hired a jeep and we'd pick up locals wanting a lift to market with their produce. There (mid 1960s) it was the custom always to "pay", in the form of peanuts, plantains or whatever. Once it was a cow's head, still steaming; we stopped at the next settlement and found a ready taker for it.

I led a group of 20 student hitchhikers from Warwick University to Dublin.

It went fine, everyone got there eventually. We did pay for a ferry from Holyhead, but that's hard to avoid. We hitched the return journey too.

It took an average of 5-6 hours.

We were successful - in part - because we were a charity group, and had signs declaring this.

However, the students who took longest were the shy ones. When thumbing a lift, it helps to look positive and happy, (unless it's raining, when looking uncomfortable can help inspire pity.)

This trip is run each year, and no-one has ever been put in danger. There are apparently very few nutters looking for hitch-victims.

Back in about 1976 my wife and I (then about 22 and 19) left London for Edinburgh one evening, expecting to have to sleep at a service are on the motorway. We got to Watford Gap at about 9.30 and got a coffee. An American chap walked up and asked if we were goibg north, and did I have a driving licence. He had just landed in the UK and wanted to get to Glasgow for trhe morning but was too tired to drive his hire car. So we drove him up there and were in Edinburgh by 7.00am - a new record!

I'm 64 years old, have spent most of the last decade in Russia and, until this summer, had never hitched in Russia (in fact I hadn't even hitched in Britain for many years, though I used my thumb to travel in four continents in the 1960s. One night last July I found myself in a godforsaken village named Proletarskyi about 600 kilometres northwest of Moscow. The timetable at the local bus station showed the last public transport to anywhere had departed an hour earlier and I realised that the only alternative to spending the night in a place much too proletarian for my taste was to try hitchhiking. I got a lift from a van driver, who told me he would turn off the highway about 50 kilometres further, leaving me in the middle of nowhere. However, before this happened, we got stuck in a trafffic jam that reduced us to walking speed at best. When we ground to a halt altogether, my driver passed the time by listening to and sometimes participating in conversations between other drivers, especially lorry drivers stuck in the same jam and conversing on their two way radios. Eventually a friend of his, driving a lorry very close to us in the stalled traffic, called in. their conversation went as follows:
Van Driver (V): "Where are you going?"
Lorry Driver (L): "To Moscow."
V: "Please take a dedushka (grandfather) with you."
L: "Your granddad died years ago."
V: "Not my granddad, you idiot."
L: "Well, whose granddad is he?"
V: "I don't know, but he's here in my van. Hold on, I'll ask him." (To me): "Whose granddad are you Grandpa?"

Well, I can take a fair amount of goodnatured badinage, especially if it offers the chance of getting to Moscow in one lift, so i made some suitably facetious reply and was soon transferred to the cab of a fast pantechnicon which, once the traffic jam was cleared, sped down the highway and delivered me to Moscow just after sunrise, but it did occur to me that it's rather undignified for a man of my age to be cadging lifts on the highway, so my overnight July trip may be the last I undertake. Hitchhiking is something all young travellers should try if only for the experience, but I wouldn't advise anyone however young to try it at night unless there's no alternative.

There are some great stories here - and now I'm reminiscing too!

I used to catch the Portsmouth ferry to Caen to visit my mother who lived about 180 miles further south. Then I'd have to hitch...

Sometimes I was there as quick as if I'd driven myself, other times it took a bit longer. But as other people have said, being a girl (and with long blonde hair) always helps. I think 9 lifts was my record.

My only odd occurence was the chap who'd been driving from Belgium who decided he needed to 'make like a bear' and sh*t in the woods. He came tottering out of the bushes in a crouch, asking me if I had any tissues!

There was also the jolly fat farmer who kindly dropped me at my mother's gate, having driven a good 20km out of his way, but who spoilt it by asking for a leetle kees as thanks just as the village postman rounded the corner on his bicycle.

And that's been it for the last 10 years... oh, apart from in Denmark when I missed a bus but no one would stop (although some young chaps in a car did turn round and drive past again to stare at us). But possibly this was due to my humungously fat friend - possibly people were worried about their rear axle?

Have just read through this and was surprised that none of the many seasoned hitchers who've contributed mentioned the changes in traffic and road conditions over the years which have made it more difficult (IMO) to pull over without causing danger.
In the sixties we had laybys aplenty. Try finding one now which isn't a bus stop.

Hitching was a lifestyle choice when I was young. It was a means of seeing a bit of the world, avoiding the world of regular job, mortgage/rent, and general drudgery and "broadening your horizons".
I would love to see it come back into fashion.
I believe it was compulsory to pick up hitchers in Cuba at the time of their economic crisis. Time for a scheme like that here.

About 20 years ago companies started camping down on their drivers picking up hitchikers due to insurance liability issues. Im suprised you got a lift in a lorry.