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Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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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