To ensure safety, she only took rides with families or female drivers, never with lone males. Sometimes a guy would pull over and say 'I won't hurt you,' but we never took the offer. As much as she felt comfortable doing so, like many others she eventually stopped hitchhiking. Now 32 years old, she isn't likely to do it again, either. It does seem harder now to get rides, whereas back then there were more people willing to stop.
People believe there is more danger out there now.
Of course hitchhiking has always involved risk. You knowingly took your chances. Every ride could have ended badly. That they didn't perhaps had as much to do with luck as anything involving the decline and fall of Western civilization. James MacLaren has been hitchhiking for 30 years.