The Virginian-Pilot, May 9, 2003

Rick Robillard is a security inspector at Norfolk International Airport, but from 1982 to 1987, when he lived in the Northern Virginia city of Springfield, he was a slug. He admits it.

Each morning, he'd drive to a parking lot near I-95. He'd stand single-file with other slugs and wait for a driver to creep by and ask if anyone was going to downtown D.C. Typically, his wait lasted less than 10 minutes.

The driver sought passengers because he could then legally zip down relatively empty HOV lanes. Back then, each vehicle in those lanes had to carry four people. By picking up three slugs, the driver cut a hair-raising, stop-and-go commute of more than an hour down to an eventless 30 minutes. ...

The Virginia Department of Transportation does not openly plug slugging; it fears liability for accidents or crime in the lots. But VDOT loves slugs, who number perhaps 10,000, because each of them represents a car off the road.
—Patrick Lackey, "In northern Virginia, rides are free and everyone wins," The Virginian-Pilot, May 9, 2003