How many people are killed by hitchhikers in the US each year - how dangerous is it to pick up a hitchhiker?

In the past 40 years 459 people have been murdered on Americas' interstates.

-FBI Uniform Crime Reports for the year 2005

www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr

This is not very many. More people die performing sex each year than hitchhiking.