”With the continuous expansion of urban scale and the rapid growth of motor vehicles, traffic congestion and restricted access have long become common problems in big cities and are gradually spreading to small and medium-sized cities.” These have seriously reduced the quality of life of the masses and lowered the efficiency of urban work, said Zhi Hui, deputy to the National People’s Congress and deputy director of the Zhengzhou North Station Dispatching Workshop of China Railway Zhengzhou Bureau Group Co., Ltd, when she was a guest at the 2019 National Two Sessions All Media Reporting Center of Henan Daily Press Group and Dahe Network Media Group in Beijing on March 7. In addition, the emptying rate of private cars is very high, which not only wastes resources but also aggravates carbon dioxide emissions and adds to atmospheric pollution.
Through the research of hitchhiking public welfare organizations around the country, Zhihui believes that “hitchhiking” has become an important part of volunteer public welfare activities in public welfare organizations around the world. However, due to the well-known safety and management issues, there is not yet a comprehensive guideline for the regulation of hitchhiking. Many hitchhiking groups around the country have emerged with a variety of practices in their efforts to promote the normalization of hitchhiking. The starting point is good, but the need for unified guiding norms and, most importantly, government advocacy, encouragement and guidance.
”At present, in addition to traditional festivals in our country, there are also many festivals with local characteristics, such as Luoyang Peony Festival and Weifang International Kite Festival, etc. These festivals have different functions from different levels to meet the people’s pursuit of a better new life, which gives us the setting of ‘World Hitchhiking Day’ provides a very good inspiration.” National People’s Congress representative Zhi Hui said, in the promotion of hitchhiking public welfare activities, caring car users around the world have made a lot of efforts, the emergence of “hitchhiking brother” “Zhengzhou hitchhiking promoter” and other Lei Feng type of car owners, as well as numerous caring hitchhiking units, hitchhiking Non-profit team.
On December 24, 2011, more than 1,000 loving car owners from all over the world, including the “World Hitchhiking Day”, were organized by Henan Hitchhikers, and more than 1,000 private cars of various models were launched in the CBD of Zhengzhou East New District. The first of its kind in the country is the promotion of hitchhiking in the form of a public service festival, which received more media coverage around the country, and the live video coverage at the time played a good role as a model for the development of hitchhiking nationwide. 2012 onwards, hitchhikers around the world, including some celebrity public figures, have also participated to varying degrees in the promotion of hitchhiking activities. Since then, the “World Hitchhiking Day” will be launched every December 24, to 2019 has spontaneously do the ninth. This idea is considered “Henan people’s creativity, Chinese initiated, the world recognized public welfare holiday”, “with a day of activities to advocate 365 days of public welfare”.
In the past 9 years, the number of riders who participated in the World Ride Day reached more than 3 million people, and the number of free rides on the day of the festival accumulated more than 10 million. For this reason they are also to the Guinness World Records official declaration, with December 24, the day to participate in the hitchhiking public welfare activities of the three figures “car number, the number of owners, the number of riders”, apply for a “hitchhiking Guinness World Records”.
In order to ensure the safety of the public welfare hitchhiking process, Zhi Hui suggested that the government support existing public welfare organizations have agreed to the holiday, December 24 every year as “World Hitchhiking Day”; promote hitchhiking travel, encourage carpooling between neighbors and friends; establish hitchhiking website, public number and APP release hitchhiking news and hitchhiking information; advocate cities to set up “HOV” multi-occupant lanes according to their own situation, to encourage hitchhiking; in the peak period, hitchhiking travel is free of charge on the highway.
Zhi Hui suggested that insurance companies should be encouraged to provide better insurance services for hitchhikers, and make clearer the responsibilities and obligations of hitchhikers and car owners; set up a hitchhiking public welfare safety fund to give caring car owners an extra safeguard; plan to set up “hitchhiking stations” in cities; hold regular “World The “world hitchhiking” seminar to discuss the management and implementation of free hitchhiking, the development of rules; accelerate the development of hitchhiking laws and regulations. (Dahe Reporter Zhu Chuanpeng)
Reference
National People’s Congress Representative Zhi Hui: It is proposed to set December 24 as “World Hitchhiking Day” Dahe.com.cn 2019-03-08 [cited 2019-03-08]
https://m.henan.gov.cn/2019/03-08/737524.html?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0
https://news.dahe.cn/2019/03-08/457696.html