Slug Bug                                                                                                         

     A couple of years ago I visited with my wife’s Library of Congress librarian sister and discovered the particulars of a very interesting and non-government regulated hitchhiking scheme called “slugging” that currently operates around our nation’s capital. 

    The system of slugging is quite simple. Back in the early 1970’s, when the oil companies first grabbed a handful of our short hairs and gasoline prices went way up to a dollar a gallon, the federal government established High Occupancy Vehicle lanes on major interstate highways where they feed into large cities. Now popularly called “carpool lanes,” the system was meant to accommodate drivers of automobiles carrying passengers by allowing them to get to work more quickly in traffic lanes that could only be used by vehicles with four (since dropped to three in DC) occupants. 

     But we were, and still are, a nation of one-person-per-car petrol addicts and the HOV lanes were not being used, not until that day when some unnamed brave commuter, who probably did not watch televisions and did not believe that all persons on foot were perverts or axe murderers, pulled up to a bus stop, rolled down the passenger window and asked the folks waiting here if any of them were headed to the Pentagon, for instance. Somehow, without government intervention, the idea caught on and slugging was born.

     Bus drivers are credited with originating the name for the system once it grew large enough to annoy them. Thinking that people were waiting for the bus, the bus driver would stop to pick up the passengers only to be waved off. As this event became more and more frequent, bus drivers began recognizing the real bus riders from the fakes. Because the people weren’t really waiting for the bus, drivers began to simply call these counterfeit riders "slugs." 

     The system is still sort of underground and not officially sanctioned, but the procedure has become quite formalized. A car needing additional passengers to meet the required three- person high occupancy vehicle minimum pulls up to one of the known slug lines. The driver usually positions the car so that the slugs are on the passenger side. The driver either displays a sign with the destination or simply lowers the passenger window, to call out the destination, such as "Pentagon," "L’Enfant Plaza," or "14th & New York." 

      The slugs first in line for that particular destination then hop into the car, confirm the destination, and off they go. No money is exchanged because of the mutual benefit. The car driver needs riders just as much as the slugs need a ride. Each party needs the other in order to survive. Normally, there is not a whole lot of conversation unless initiated by the driver. Usually the only words exchanged are "Thank you" and “You are welcome” as the driver drops off the slugs at the destination. The ride home follows the same pattern.

    Cool idea. Now that we have saved the planet and racked up points with the Nobel Committee, here are a few more notions that apply a little better to hick-infested rural areas.

     First, a most unpopular notion: Designated Littering Zones. Face it, litter laws are not working. There are still drivers who suck down a Pepsi, two packs of Hostess Ho-Hos, and a couple of jars of Powerbait, then cannot stand to have the evidence of their gluttony rattling around with them in the sanctity of their cars, so they flip the packaging out into the great outside world. No problem. It said right back there on that little green sign that this section of highway has been adopted by the Friends of the Ostrich Pluckers. They'll pluck up the mess.
      I suggest that we accommodate these slobs and award the ostrich pluckers and can pickers by creating Litter Zones, stretches of highway in which littering is encouraged, thereby clustering the refuse into identifiable corridors and making the retrieval a simpler process. “Pitch It Out, Next Two Miles.” Then, if we catch someone throwing out trash anywhere other than in these zones, we fine the crap out of them and force them to participate in mass public spelling bees.
    Second: Mandatory Automotive Maintenance Classes. Not long ago I stopped my life for two hours and voluntarily changed the inside dual tire on a motorhome while the just-turned-twenty-one able-bodied operator sat inside on a flowered couch and impressed his girlfriend with his commitment to feminism This person had no interest in learning how to accomplish this task himself, the assumption being, I suppose, that there would always be someone of the lower caste available to perform these duties. This person should not have been issued a driver's license. I suggest that automobiles are here to stay, even after the fossil fuels are depleted, and that our society would benefit from educating drivers about the rudiments of personal transport before we issue licenses to operate tons of rolling metal with hundreds of rotating parts.  Make Auto Shop a required secondary school class.
     Third. License the Hitchhikers. Sometime government must step in and undo the mess they have created. Folks don’t hitchhike because it is illegal almost everywhere and nobody picks them up. Short of launching a mass re-education effort directed at those who get aroused by the details of isolated, grisly instances of random violence, I suggest that some of the fear and a whole lot of the illegality could be taken out of the hitchhiker/driver-with-room-to-spare matrix if we begin to decriminalize poverty by licensing hitchhikers. 

     This could be done at the state level, by passing legislation that would supercede all anti-hitching laws and establish a process whereby a person can, for, say, three dollars, register as a legal hitchhiker and be issued a large, highly visible, identity poster. Unregistered hitchhikers could purchase a permit from any law officer. A corollary to this permitting process, and a nod to the slugging system, would be to give a tax break to those people who do stop to give a lift to the hitcher. The interaction could be verified by having the rider sign a slip documenting the time and distance of the ride and including the state hitching license number.