Hitchhiking statistics

I'm also keeping record of my hitching trips. Not as detailed as Frank does - I only count distances.

But I also have a map where I mark my trips.

also die gmaps variante ist ja eine geile idee. sollte man vielleicht mal überlegen ob man ein benutzerfreundliches formular dafür bastelt und das mit zu uns linkt?

im übirgen hab ich lange nicht mehr aufgeschrieben. Aber hab immerhin auch schon so zwei Bücher voll bekommen.

mabe

hey, i'm also trying to log my rides...missing maybe 3-4 times the way enschede - hörstel and back, this list is quite exact :)

I guess remembering every lift I had is quite difficult....might be a lot since starting last year :)

Ich fänd auch eine ziemlich einfache liste toll, wo einfach untereinander augelistet wird, wer wann getrampt ist. Nur Name, Lift von wo nach wo, km, Zeit.

Und die Liste wird immer länger und länger...

Tranpsarenz und so.

mabe

Hi Alex und alle. The 27.500 was on 01.01.2007. I update this specific graph once a year, after I split the lenght of rides crossing borders over two countries. I do this once a year (last year was the first time actually). I have hitchhiked 6,5 kilometer in Lithuania without a ride, because I got this ride just before the border. Therefore this 7 km ride is devided over Poland (0,5 km) and Lithuania (6,5 km) and Poland gets one more ride. Soon I'll update the full list with my hitches from July-September 2007, which should be about 3000 km. 27.500 has gone to about 35.700 km so far this year. This means that I am still behind the total of Jochem Lesparre from the Netherlands, but not that much. Here is a full list of Jochem: http://www.jochem.lesparre-dewaal.nl/liftlijst.htm.

Jochem is Dutch but seems to like Germans when analyzing his list: over 15.000 km in Germany he hitched, and "only" 11.000 in the Netherlands.

However, for the Netherlands I already beat him, because I did close to 13.000 km in my country on thumb. Coming weekend I'll do another 250 km here.

My number of rides is now closing in 700. New in the list this year will be Slovakia, where I got through last weekend. It will be listed as one ride, total kilometers about 200, and average length 200 km... So Slovakia will beat Germany in this sense... Total wait of 30 minutes, which makes about 10 seconds per kilometer, by which Slovakia is the best hh country for me so far... Germany, Holland and Belgium are all around 25-35 seconds per kilometer...

Oh, and waiting time this year was a bit lower than last, while the share of rides with another hitchhiker increased, by heart, from about 15-20% to about 25-35%. And those hitching partners this year were foremost males...

I'm also curious for ridelists of others. Just found the ones of Platschi and Mr Tweek on their Hitchwiki logs. Who has more... more... more...

I'm surprised about you experience in Slovakia, because for me, this was absolute the worst country for hitchhiking.
I got only on Lift there, and that was only for like 10 km and I waited about 6 hours for that (while walking another 10 km).
It was from Bratislava to the Hungarian border.
Well whatever, in both cases, it's too less numbers for senseful statistics.

My stats for SK make no sense at all. Average ride ca 200 km (N=1). Average wait ca 30 mins (N=1). Stats for NL, D, B make more sense, with N=400, N=70, N=100 respectively, or sth like this!

> Keep on thumbing Frank, cool stuff! I'm courious how the waiting time goes up with age... :)

It does not have too. This is what you can learn from the stats of Robert Prins. As for me; I'm doing quite the same, but I'm all the time young during the research period. Or would you think it already matters being 24 or 29?

If we do not only look at pick up time, but consider average speed including the waiting time, then we have other relevant factors. In NL the 120 kmh speed limit was introduced 15-20 yrs ago; before it was 100 kmh. Supposedly, the average speed of drivers would increase. On the other hand; the Netherlands faces a mobility overkill (at least from the environmentalists' point of view), which reduces speed of driving.

For inspiration, look at the chart "vitesse moyenne annuelle 1980-1998", which is an analysation of the long term hitchhiking activities of Robert Prins. Check here, about halfway in the document:
http://membres.lycos.fr/bpierret/memoire/memoire.html

On the long run it would be quite easy to bring down average waiting time by choosing the easy routes more often. Eg Luxembourg - Amsterdam or Munchen - Berlin, and by avoiding hard ones like Neuss - Dortmund or Traben Trarbach - Kloden...

F.

Wow, never saw that before. Worked with the guy, was promised a copy of his dissertation, but never got it.

Anyway, I'm a happy bunny!

Robert

PS: Average speed is not going up anymore, since a few trips it's stuck on about 98.1 km/h, mostly due to the many trips to Eastern Europe.
--
Robert AH Prins (257,000+ km and counting)
robertdotahdotprins on the big account from Google