51吃瓜

As the ever-increasing use of services like Uber, Lyft and AirBnB show, it is safe to trust other people. But is it time for hitchhiking to make a comeback?

On August 1,聽, a robot that had successfully hitchhiked more聽than 10,000 kilometers Canada聽and northern Europe, was destroyed by unknown vandals in Philadelphia鈥檚 Old City neighborhood. For a week, the robot鈥檚 violent decapitation was a favorite 鈥渘ews of the weird鈥� story and a chance for commentators to聽 of the dangers of hitchhiking. As one put it, 鈥淲ith hitchhiking so rare today, especially among non-sociopaths, it has increased the chance that a sociopathic hitchhiker will get picked up by a sociopathic driver.鈥�

At the risk of revealing any hitherto-unrealized sociopathic tendencies, I want to speak in defense of hitchhiking and consider what its 鈥渄eath鈥� means for our burgeoning sharing economy.

Hitchhiking histories

I started picking up hitchhikers during my brief stint in graduate school. I was living on the border of New York and Massachusetts in聽a so tiny聽that it was a seven-mile drive to buy milk or gasoline. It was, as they say, centrally isolated, and anyone hitchhiking during the upstate New York winter was doing so out of necessity, not on a lark.

Some of my neighbors simply didn鈥檛 have cars. Giving rides was a low-cost way of meeting people in my community and doing a good deed.

It鈥檚 something I continue today on the Massachusetts side of the border, in Berkshire County, where I now live. I鈥檝e learned a great deal from my riders: How easy it is to lose your driver鈥檚 license and how expensive it can be to get it back; and what being without a car does to your financial, health and romantic prospects when you live in a rural area.

I acknowledge I鈥檓 in a privileged position鈥擨鈥檓 male, large enough to be physically intimidating and well-off enough to afford the extra fuel and time giving a lift may entail鈥攂ut I鈥檝e never had a ride that made me feel uncomfortable or endangered.

The fact is, hitchhiking used to be a normal thing to do. During World War II, gas rationing turned聽 up hitchhikers into a patriotic duty, helping to bring fighting men to and from their bases.

But this聽began to in the 1950s, and by the mid-1970s, hitchhiking聽had been in some municipalities and was on the road to extinction in the United States. Some a surge in car ownership for hitchhiking鈥檚 demise. Others point to the increase in women driving, suggesting that women driving alone were reluctant to pick up riders. But historian聽Ginger Strand 聽that hitchhiking didn鈥檛 die a natural death: it was killed.

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As early as the mid-1950s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran campaigns designed to convince American motorists that hitchhikers were risking their lives in getting into strangers鈥� cars, and that drivers picking up riders were in equal danger.

Hitchhiking was connected with communism, and given FBI Director聽J. Edgar Hoover鈥檚 for American counterculture, it鈥檚 possible the FBI鈥檚 war on hitchhiking was a reaction to books like Kerouac鈥檚 On the Road, and to the tendency of civil rights activists and other student radicals to use hitchhiking as their primary means of travel.

A second blow to hitchhiking came from the visibility of serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s. Widely in the news media, the聽鈥淔reeway Killer鈥濃�攍ater revealed to be three serial killers operating independently鈥攚as associated with the deaths of 100 people in California, mostly hitchhikers. While these spectacular and brutal killings captured public attention and led municipalities to pass laws against hitchhiking,聽a California Highway Patrol in 1974聽found that hitchhiking was a factor in 0.63% of crimes鈥攈ardly an epidemic.

But the apparent connection between hitchhiking and murder, combined with law enforcement campaigns to end the practice, succeeded in de-normalizing hitchhiking.

The sharing economy: hitching with a fee

Now, with the rise of the so-called 鈥渟haring economy,鈥� we鈥檙e seeing the renormalization of the practice of catching rides from strangers.

Of course, neither Lyft nor Uber are promoting hitchhiking鈥攖hey鈥檙e promoting unlicensed taxi services where ambitious start-up companies charge users a commission to be matched with an 鈥渋ndependent contractor.鈥� But the language used to promote these services could be as easily used to make a renewed case for hitchhiking.

Uber itself as聽an environmentally friendly way聽to take private cars off the road. Lyft no longer describes itself as 鈥測our friend with a car,鈥� as it did when it launched, but it continues to聽offer a 鈥減rofile鈥� service to passengers and drivers to meet each other聽and make a new friendship. Further challenging the idea of 鈥渟tranger danger,鈥� AirBnB encourages people to sleep on strangers鈥� couches, with聽videos on their website聽that celebrate human kindness and assure customers that they 鈥渂elong anywhere.鈥�

So why, in a world where it鈥檚 too dangerous to hitchhike, are people willing to get in a vehicle driven by a stranger聽whose may have been only cursorily checked?

One possible reason for this increase in trust: technology.

Tracking reputations on your screen

Since eBay made it commonplace for individuals to sell goods to one another outside the traditional retail system, technologies to track user reputation have become the norm in peer-to-peer marketplaces.

Uber, Lyft and AirBnB all rely on mutual reputation systems: you rate your driver or host; they rate you as a passenger or guest. Develop anything other than a stellar reputation and it becomes difficult to use the system. There are consequences for bad behavior, and a strong disincentive to cheat (or ,聽kidnap and rape). In theory.

In practice, these reputation systems don鈥檛 work very well. There is strong social pressure toward positive ratings鈥攁nd because ratings are public, there鈥檚 a tendency toward both collusion and revenge. The net effect, as writer and computer scientist聽Tom Slee 聽analyzing publicly available ride sharing data, is that the overwhelming majority of ratings are the highest possible. In other words, there is no meaningful way to distinguish between great and mediocre participants.

It鈥檚 not even clear that these systems deter bad actors. Despite its celebrated reputation systems,聽eBay was so with fraud聽that PayPal was able to develop a lucrative business as an escrow service, holding funds until both parties in a transaction reported themselves satisfied with the outcome.

If we were really concerned about our safety when entering a car or an apartment, reputation systems wouldn鈥檛 provide much reassurance.

A less generous explanation for why we trust Uber and not hitchhiking is that class-based discrimination is at work in these systems.

Discriminatory behavior

In a 2014聽Wired 聽about trust in the sharing economy, Lyft driver (and yoga teacher) Cindy Manit explained why she wasn鈥檛 scared to pick up riders: 鈥淚t鈥檚 not just some person from off the street.鈥� Smartphone-equipped, credit-card holding technology early adopters, in other words, are different from the hitchhiking riffraff who can鈥檛 afford Uber.

Questions about discrimination in systems like Uber and AirBnB, however, are multilayered and complicated. Writer and editor Latoya Peterson聽 Uber in late 2012聽as offering an (often expensive) escape from the frustrating and humiliating experience of trying to hail a cab as a black person. In contrast, University of Denver Law Professor Nancy Leong that the ability to see the name and photo of a passenger before choosing to pick her up could lead to conscious racial discrimination, or simply to discrimination through unconscious bias.

Using data from AirBnB in New York City, Harvard Business School Professors Ben Edelman and Michael Luca聽were able to that black hosts are paid 12% less for their properties, suggesting that renters consciously or unconsciously discriminate against black hosts, leading to market pressure for those hosts to lower prices on their rentals.

It鈥檚 unclear whether the rise of Uber and Lyft will alleviate or aggravate racial discrimination. In the meantime, though, these services signal that a user is a person of means, an assurance that may lead to increased levels of trust.

Perhaps the most optimistic answer to the question of why we trust transaction partners in the sharing economy is that most people are trustworthy.

Good news: America is a safer place

The message AirBnB is paying handsomely to promote鈥攖hat you can trust other people鈥攊s, ultimately, true.

In 2013, 1.16 million violent crimes were in the US, the lowest number since 1978, when 1.09 million violent crimes were reported.

But in 1978 the US population was 222.6 million; today it鈥檚 318.9 million.聽Department of Justice聽and聽FBI 聽paint a picture of a nation getting steadily safer since 1994, with adults now three times less likely to be victims of violent crime than a generation ago.

The problem for hitchhiking is that our perceptions have not caught up to this new, safer world: 68% of Americans聽 by Gallup in 2011 believed that crime was on the rise in the US.

For those still worried about the risks of hitchhiking, there is also technological argument for why it is a safer environment now than in the 1970s:聽91% of American adults mobile phones, enabling them to call 911; 64% of American adults have smartphones and so could take a picture of the driver in case of any problem.

But while hitchhiking has become safer, it hasn鈥檛 had the advantage of a well-funded campaign to renormalize it as a behavior.

Carpe diem

AirBnB may have the resources to encourage people to trust strangers, but it鈥檚 not clear that the campaign will have benefits for pro-social, non-revenue-generating activities like carpooling, couchsurfing or hitchhiking. That鈥檚 a missed opportunity.

Whether or not the giants of the on-demand, peer economy believe their own rhetoric about sharing and social connection鈥攐r are simply using it as a marketing strategy鈥攖he realization that we live in a nation where it鈥檚 safe to trust other Americans is a first step in addressing inequality, racism and political division.

Picking up hitchhikers, for me, has been one of the best ways to understand the community I live in and the problems my neighbors face. Whether or not it鈥檚 the right way for you to make connections is something I can鈥檛 judge. But I can tell you this: Social serendipity is too important an activity to be left to the advertising slogans of sharing-economy start-ups in the hope that they will make it happen as a side benefit.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author鈥檚 own and do not necessarily reflect 51吃瓜鈥檚 editorial policy.

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