Changes

In some countries, like Germany, drivers often driver over the emergency lane during strong traffic jams to get to an upcoming motorway exit. In some other countries this is much less the case (Netherlands). In general, it is best not to walk on the emergency lane, but you can safely walk over the grass sides. Is walking needed? If you are on an onramp and see a petrol station further on, it might be well worth to go there on foot. Most of the occasions that I hitched on emergency lanes, I stood next to a petrol station, where I got dropped off by a previous driver. Then in case of traffic jam it is much more effective to just go back to the motorway near the little road that goes from petrol station to the motorway. With slow traffic (<50 kmh and optimum <30 kmh) just stand by the edge of the emergency lane just before the spot where the traffic from the petrol station comes up the motorway again. That's a very dull part of the emergency lane where usually nobody rides. Also, nobody is surprised if suddenly a car stops at this place, that's a place where people are attentive. It's also very easily understandable for drivers that a hitchhiker simply came from the petrol station, so it is trusted. I've used this technique at petrol stations [[De Lucht ]] on the A2 in the Netherlands (both north and south), at [[Rasthof Michendorf ]] going east and at [[Rasthof Auetal ]] going west. It works perfect, you can use signs for a really long distance. Just do it. I've also hitchhiked near access lanes and also on motorway junctions during traffic jams (twice on junction Empel near 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, a few times on junction Leenderheide near Eindhoven and at junction Deil north of 's-Hertogenbosch). On motorway junctions of the type cloverleaf (http://www.cbrd.co.uk/reference/interchanges/img/cloverleaf.gif) it's sometimes also well possible to hitch on the small inside curves, though you have to be dropped off on the spot (I would never want to walk all over junction to get to the ride curve... so normally it would work only if your direction is going "to the right", while your driver is going straight ahead AND prepared to stop on the junction).