Slugging

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Slugging,^[1] also known as casual carpooling and flexible carpooling,^[2] is the practice of forming ad hoc, informal carpools for purposes of commuting, essentially a variation of hitchhiking. A driver picks up these non-paying passengers (known as "slugs" or "sluggers") at key locations, as having these additional passengers means that the driver can qualify to use an HOV lane or not be subject to road pricing. Slugging is common mostly in the U.S.,^[3] specifically in major cities such as the Washington metropolitan area, San Francisco, Houston.

The essence of the systems is the use of a meeting-place to form carpools, without any advance contact between the participants. For people wishing to carpool, going to a meeting place is a very low-effort method for getting into a carpool, compared with any other system that involves contacting potential riders or drivers in advance, and arranging the trip. The key is that other people are also coming to the meeting place, and there need to be sufficient people traveling from any one meeting-place to the common destination so that the waiting time to form a carpool is acceptable.

Slug lines are generally organized and maintained by volunteers, although there has been government involvement in organization as well.