Hitchhike after dark !

My last hitching trips always ended in the dark, because it's getting dark so early now. I don't have any reflection suit or something, just a normal gray winter jacket.
However I didn't find that I am much slower than at daytime. My last trip was about 420 km in 3 Lifts, the waiting times were 40 mins, 20 mins and 2 mins. 40 mins is quite much indeed (on a German service area), but at that time it wasn't even dark yet, so that wasn't the reason.

My only problem was, that it was fucking cold, at it also rained occassionally :(
All in all I made the 420 km in 4:30, so not a bad time.

Reflective suit and light helps really a lot, it is my best tip for hitchhiking in the dark, especially on non motorways where you stand by the roadside.

Ten days ago I came back in three days from the middle of Slovakia to the Netherlands, with stays overnight in Bratislava and Wurzburg. On the Austrian-German border I made my biggest mistake in my 5 yrs of hh so far. I let my phone in the car. It was the last half our with light that day, clearly I was confused / out of balance coz I lost my phone. Thus I had to hitchhike in the dark. On the Austrian-German border (beginning of German A3) it is possible to hitchhike on the motorway as there is a speed limit of 60 kmh. In the dark it took a while to get away, after 20 minutes (when it really got dark) I took on my reflective vest (it weighs nothing!!) and lighted it with my headlight, and another reflector on my arm. Every five minutes or so I could let a car stop and the 4th or 5th was prepared to take me AND had space in the Mercedes.

In this situation reflective coat, reflector and ligth SAVED MY ASS!!!

In Slovakia and Poland I also hitchhiked in the dark on countryside road (national road 30 in Poland from Zgorzelec (Gorlitz-PL) to Jelenia Gora (Hirschberg)) with the reflective vest and worked quite well. I used my headlight, it goes like this (see also the FAQ on www.autostop.lt): on quiet road with a lot of darkness show NO light untill the driver is about 10 seconds away. Then (at the right moment!) start blinking, with my headlight I can switch from white to red light, so blinking red-white-red-white-red-white. It catches the immediate attention of the driver. Usually slows down from 80 kmh to 30-40 kmh when done in the right way. Driver is very attentive, who and what is blinking there (police?). With the car 3-5 seconds away lift the arm with reflective band on it... look at the driver... driver may stop...

It worked very well for me. So I got a lift in the dark in Slovakia from a driver with three giggling young nons :) :) :)

Hitchhiking at night by Vilnius Hitchhiking Club

http://www.autostop.lt/faq/night.html

Most of the times I have a reflective vest in my backpack as well, especially when I know I will hitchhike in the dark. Once, about two years ago, I stood in the dark on a motorway access road in Belgium. I stood there for about an hour and luckily a women stopped and took me along to the next petrol station. Most people just tooted. Since then I take a vest along, even you are a good hitchhiker, you can never know where you end up. The reflective vest is really cheap and very tiny and lightly, so it does not disturb in your travel gear. In most European countries it is by law to have one like this in your car.

On 31 July 2005 I've also hitchhiked in the dark. It just got dark. Didn't have reflective coat or light or so, after a while I found that I could wear my raincoat inside out, as inside it was metal-like greyish, quite eye catching color.

After a while a really pretty female stopped and she offered to take me just four kilometer on or so, to the village where she lived... I honestly answered that it wouldn't help me; the second thought was "take me home, baby!!!"... Hehehehehe :D

I got stuck at a Reststop somewhere before Brussels - I think it was in 2004... at night - and I spent all night there... next day I had to chicken out, took the next best hitch (which did take till something like 10 in the Morning) ended up in Antwerpen and then took a train to Köln. I didn't like Antwerpen. Anyone about to say something nice about the town?

Whilst I lived out in the sticks of the black forest (hah - should be "out in the logs" - not "sticks"...) - well, when I was living out there, night-time hitchhikers usually were 16-17 year olds, who got stuck at some "village-ball" two towns from home. So I got to take along quite a few youngsters, usually in high spirits - or high, or in spirits... I always thought that was rather risky, and I do not feel all that comfortable hitching at night, either.

Around 10% of my rides have been between 22:00 and 07:00. Many of them were from Raststaettes and the like, but I've had quite a few rides just standing at the side of the road.

The key requirement is that you are visible, in years gone by that meant waving my white bag or finding lampposts, nowadays I alway carry a reflective belt and some reflective thingies around my wrists.

I've never correlated the waiting times at night to the time, but if it turns out that I cannot add a current mainframe feature to the PC version my hitch-hike statistics programs, I might convert the latter into a format that can be compiled by another compiler (they're now 16-bit DOS...) and add such a feature. FWIW, drop me a line if you want the programs.

Robert
--
Robert AH Prins (254,000+ km and counting)
robertdotahdotprins on the big account from Google

Hi Robert,

if there any chance develop a pooled version of the hitch-hike statistics program? I think it would be great when people could enter their data to a common pool and we would have even more data (of course made anonymous). Regarding the program, I do think of a PHP/MySQL version and some AJAX for better usability would be sweet...

Any programmers here that would be up for this? Anyone that would love to develop the the framework (e.g. from Roberts program to a pooled online version...), so that somebody has just to code this down...

Best,
alex

PS: Nachttrampen hat an den deutschen Raststaetten meiner Erfahrung nach nur so zwischen 4 und 6 Uhr nen Tiefpunkt...

meine nacht-tramp-actions fanden bisher nur auf autobahnraststellen erfolgreich statt, aber teilweise asuch mit wartezeiten von ueber vier stunden, aber auch nur von nichteinmal 30sek.
an landstrassen bin ich immer nachts gescheitert, is aber auch nicht so wild, meist such ich mir dan ein angehnemen platz zum pennen.
die idee mit der signalweste is allerdings cool, und eine kopflampe trag ich sowie so immer mit mir durch die gegend.

Ich bin nur im letzten Jahr auf dem Rückweg meiner Reise nachts getrampt...

Ging in Sofia mal überhaupt nicht, obwohl es erst 11 Uhr war. Morgens um 6, sobald es wieder hell wurde, war es dann wieder ein Kinderspiel. kurios.

Später stand ich dann abends um halb10 in München, ging auch ganz gut, danach an einem kleinen Parkplatz jemanden angequatscht, ging auch, nur dann bei Ulm an irgendeiner Raststätte gegen 1 Uhr vergeblichst 2 Stunden lang versucht, eine Mitfahrgelegenheit zu bekommen, obwohl ab und an Leute an der Tanke hielten (habe Leute direkt angesprochen)....bin dann gegen 4 kurz schlafen gegangen irgendwo, um 6 dann wieder an die Strasse und siehe da, keine 5 Minuten und nen Lift bis nach Frankfurt....

Kann alex standpunkt bestätigen: trampen an dt. Raststätten nach Mitternacht ist nicht sooo der Hit.