What is "shunpiking"

The term shunpiking comes from the word shun, meaning "to avoid", and pike, a term referring to turnpikes, which are roads that require payment of a toll to travel on them. People who often avoid toll roads sometimes call themselves shunpikers. Historically, the paths around the tollbooths came to be so well known they were called "shun-pikes".

Shunpiking has also come to mean an avoidance of major highways (regardless of tolls) in preference for bucolic and scenic interludes along lightly traveled country roads.

While the motive behind shunpiking is usually little more than a desire to avoid paying tolls, it is also not unheard of from a person or group to engage in shunpiking while travelling to and/or from the scene of a crime that he or she or they are intending to perpetrate or have just perpetrated. In that case, the goal of engaging in shunpiking is to avoid leaving any record of the perpetrator(s) travelling to and/or away from, and/or having been near the scene of the crime.