I'm worried that the article presents the statistic:
"in 1974 that hitchhiking was a factor in 0.63 percent of crimes [in California]"
and brushes this off like it was nothing. This seems like a disturbingly high percentage to me (although we don't know what percentage of people hitchhiked).
If you consider that good risk management often involves avoiding 1 in a thousand chances, sometimes 1 in a million (depending on the cost if it occurs) it seems to me like hitchhiking should still be something you regard as having higher-than-average risks.
I also noticed that, though I'd want to know some more details, mostly what "a factor in" means. If it's a stricter definition, where the hitchhiker or the person picking them up committed a crime with the other party as the victim, that does seem like a quite high percentage. On the other hand, I suspect they might be using a very loose definition of "a factor in", where they're counting any crime committed by a person who hitchhiked at any point close in time to the crime, as having been indirectly facilitated by hitchhiking.
"in 1974 that hitchhiking was a factor in 0.63 percent of crimes [in California]"
and brushes this off like it was nothing. This seems like a disturbingly high percentage to me (although we don't know what percentage of people hitchhiked).
If you consider that good risk management often involves avoiding 1 in a thousand chances, sometimes 1 in a million (depending on the cost if it occurs) it seems to me like hitchhiking should still be something you regard as having higher-than-average risks.