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Comment by hurin | Hacker News Reader

It's just a ridiculous culture of fear and distrust of others.

Is the wisdom of not leaving your things alone in a cafe unattended also a ridiculous culture of fear & distrust?

I hitch & pick up some hitchhikers (except the ones who haven't showered in years), but it seems a simple matter of fact that hitchhiking makes you more vulnerable on both sides of the deal. I don't think it's wrong to consider the risks.

Also if we are to compare statistics, the article puts forward 0.04 murders per day related to hitchhiking in California. Ok, well there's 7.7 traffic fatalities per day in California. But how many people drive on the road each day, vs. how many people hitchhike?

If there were 1 million cars on the road in California each day, there would have to be 5,200 hitchhikers each day for "risk parity" for the two activities. That is, choosing to drive your car or choosing to hitchhike would be equally risky. If there are less hitchhikers per day than that, it is more dangerous than driving- if there are more, it is less dangerous than driving.

The point being that while hitchhiking is not the nation's biggest source of violence, the risk is not as small as the article tries to paint.

Did you actually read the article they are using as a reference for the 0.04 figure? http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/april/highwayserial_040...

I do not typically read all the references in addition to the article. Re-reading the original article, I don't know why I thought the 0.04 number was a California number.

Still, rate per capita is useful for identifying "what are our top problems" but potentially very misleading for evaluating "how risky is this activity I am thinking about engaging in"

It's really not. At the very least, by allowing an unfamiliar person into the car I've made the trip less safe for both of us, because now my attention is split between them and the road.

I've never had that experience, I hitch-hiked after college in a few countries (outside the US), and I found that often people on long hauls are happy to have someone to talk to and stay engaged during the trip.

Am I saying dangerous crack-addicts don't exist? Sure they do, but the idea that you are more likely to be hurt picking up a hitch-hiker than in a convenience store, or by another driver is completely without evidence.

Here's the thinking: People driving cars or shopping at convenience stores are a pretty wide slice of the population. On the other hand, most people aren't and never will be hitchhikers. Since most normal people opt out of the group, hitchhikers are thus more likely to be dangerous people.

> hitchhikers are thus more likely to be dangerous people.

Do you have any reference to support this? Or is it just personal fantasy? If you look at the fbi.gov article mentioned (I linked it in a lower comment as well), you may notice that the hitchhikers were most often the victims: The victims in these cases are primarily women who are living high-risk, transient lifestyles

That you nevertheless think this statement to be true - I think rather supports my point about it being a question of culturally conditioned fear and stereotypes.

Do you see the "thus" there? It is references what came before it. And the whole thing is prefaced with "Here's the thinking". It is explaining a line of reasoning that leads people to be more suspicious of hitchhikers than they are of people in more mundane situations.

Anyway, whether hitchhikers are more often victims has no bearing on the question of whether picking up a hitchhiker is more likely to be dangerous than encountering some random person at a convenience store. Most people are quite certain they aren't going to murder a hitchhiker, so they don't worry about that in deciding whether they'll pick one up.

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