If my mother had known how much my friends and I hitchhiked when we were young, I would have died at an early age. Even then, we were pretty cautious, and mainly rode in the backs of pickups, but doing it today is a whole different ballgame.

Sue

It sounds like maybe you are prepared for the wrong thing.

maybe a defenseive driving course of some sort is in order.

I find it interesting that the perception is that violent crime is high, whereas a lot of US statistics show that these rates have been coming down since early 90s and present rates are closer to what they were during a short downturn in 83 and on the rising slope in the mid-70s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

Of course if you judge crime rates by media depictions, with two to ten murders a night on crime shows, and an emphasis on twisted crimes like cannibalism and wearing people's skin, you would think the nation was awash in mass murderers, child molesters, and villains so horrid they would turn the stomach of your average brain-eating zombie.

One thing to consider is that the overall crime rates have come down since the 90s but also a good proportion of the crimes, past and present, tended to be in select high-crime areas and focused on select sectors of the society like hookers and drug dealers. The crime rate for the average person not engaged in those activities and in those areas is considerably lower.

It pays to be careful but let's not waste energy being frightened by scary shadows and horror stories told around the campfire.

I don't know whether crime is up or down. A lot of places have deliberately fudged the numbers in various ways to make it appear crime is down. Reportedly Chicago fudged their numbers so much the FBI refuses to use them.

Art, I believe you are correct. I believe I have run across stats showing declining capital crimes.

I don't think most people in America need to worry much about violent crimes or rioting due to natural disasters for the first few days post event. Shock, fear, disruption, hope, stocked resources all lead to a sense that the system will right itself quickly. As the timeline expands I think people will become progressively more protective or aggressive.

This is not to dismiss the emotional reaction to human responses that cause wide spread damage like LA/Watts/Chicago riots, Anarchists, etc., which spark immediate aggressive mentality though usually contained to a specific area, as you mentioned.

A popular meme is that people are so much more evil and corrupt that fraud must be obscuring the lastly increased crime rates people who buy into this meme 'know is there'.

I really think there is a fairly large drop-off in crime rates based on two things:

Demographics, we are an aging nation and crime, particularly violent crime, is a young man's game. Most crime is committed by males who are 15 to 30. Fewer males in that group pretty much defines and explains a lower crime rate.

I also, as a personal bias based on studying history, I really doubt that all other things being equal, people have become more evil and corrupt over time. Yes, it is entirely likely that some cities and localities are obscuring their crime rates. But it is also pretty clear that many places were doing the same thing a decades ago, and pretty much forever.

Until the 60s a certain Florida small town was claiming it essentially had no crime. Sure, the mayor's boys were hellions who got drunk, beat people up, even burnt down a house with people inside but .... that wasn't really crime. Boys will be boys and youthful enthusiasm. And yes, there was that accusation of rape but the girl was not selective with her favors ... And the sailors from the navy base one county over would drive in to party and raise hell but no real crimes. We have a nice, safe town here full of honest, God fearing people. We work hard to keep it that way so the tourists feel safe.

Read the book "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. It relates a true story of the murder of a family in 1959. It sold well in part because the idea of a stranger going into a house and killing a family was relatively new. It caught the public imagination and inspired may other stories.

From:http://www.alternet.org/books/145819/ayn_rand,_hugely_popular_author_and_inspiration_to_right-wing_leaders,_was_a_big_admirer_o%3Cbr%3Ef_serial_killers?page=1

"Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him."

(I never like Rand and this did nothing to make me like her more.)

Then we can go to the Bath School Disaster: In a nutshell

1927 -- US: Bath, Michigan School Disaster. Andrew Kehoe, seeking revenge against the community for taxes imposed on his farm to pay for a new school, set off a TNT bomb in the school, killing 43 people, including 39 grade-school children. After the explosion, Kehoe killed his wife, then drove his truck back, loaded with dynamite & nails, to the school, & set it off, killing himself & the school superintendent.

So we have a family annihilation attack in 1959, a kidnapper and serial killer and a anti-tax bomber in 1027. These were all big news at the time but the popular view, fueled by a steady drumbeat of fictional mass murderers every night on crime shows, the feeling is that murder is much more common now.

So crime rates are down a bit since the 90s -- do the current victims care?

Crime figures don't really mean much. They go down with bad weather and up with the full moon. If your area had a year that went from extremely low temperatures to heavy snow to flooding to an overtaxed power grid going down for a month, someone, somewhere is going to come up with the 'fact' that crime rate of those periods was down, causing an overall annual drop so it must be that things are looking up. In fact, the figures don't mean a thing.

Figures can show whatever a person wants them to show. Since government and business (and many individuals) have apparently lost all sense of right and wrong, they go with what looks good. If business (source of taxes) is down in their city or part of it, just change the unfavorable statistics a bit. Toss out bait and the victim will come.

Sue

Might be a great idea! It's amazing how being in the right can override a good outcome. "I'm right and you're wrong!" doesn't keep the car from getting mangeled and having to hoof it. Learning how to safely avoid the idiots might be a good investment.

A lot of people talk about crash avoidance but when your stopped at a red light and get rear ended you can't really avoid that. Wife was rear ended 4 times in two years all while stopped at red lights each time.
My defense for that is having a trailer hitch and a frame, I've been rear ended a couple times while sitting at lights and drove away each time and sprayed a little rust-o-leum on the hitch.

Nearly all of my accidents here have been rear-enders, mostly after I was already stopped.

The trailer hitch is a great idea. The bigger, the better.

Sue