http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123205611103787217.html

“Although commercial jetliners are equipped with life vests and inflatable slides, there have been few successful attempts at water landings during the jet age. Indeed, even though pilots go through the motions of learning to ditch a plane in water, the generally held belief is that such landings would almost certainly result in fatalities.”

All that said, I hope that there is no similar disproof of the bicycle bomb theory.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/01/15/plane-hudson.html

Whether the vests saved anyone’s life in this instance is not yet known, although it is easy enough to imagine someone falling into the water during the evacuation. (The life vest would prevent them from drowning, so that they could die of hypothermia instead.)

I think it’s simply down to the general public’s lack of understanding of what a bicycle is, and what it’s good for. Many people in the UK simply seem to fear bicycles.

One of the first things I noticed here relative to the UK is that in the centre of the city pedestrians don’t pull their children away from you and give you a hard stare if your bicycle comes within a few metres. They simply ignore you as you cycle by.

It has always puzzled me why there are so many letters to newspapers in the UK from people have been been “nearly killed” by cyclists as it’s well out of all proportion to the danger.

To me, a near death experience would probably involve a pretty major injury and a long hospital stay. But for them, merely seeing a bike at close quarters seems to be enough.

It’s the same with the “bombs”. Whether or not one has ever existed isn’t really the point. It has been adequately demonstrated that bicycle bombs are at the very least extremely rare and in a cycle hostile place such as the UK there are much better ways of carrying around large quantities of high explosives without detection than by putting it into bicycle frames.

The whole thing is much more of a fear of bicycles than a fear of actual bombs.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSP1811320080513?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

May 13, 2008
“JAIPUR, India (Reuters) – Seven bombs ripped through the crowded streets of India’s western city of Jaipur on Tuesday evening, killing around 60 people in markets and outside Hindu temples.

The bombs, many strapped to bicycles, exploded within minutes of each other in Jaipur’s pink walled city, a magnet for foreign tourists.”

Clearly we cannot trust people who behave so irrationally with our safety and that I believe is one reason why so many cyclists routinely break the law by for example riding on pavements. We cannot expect protection from the law enforcers therefore we must make our own arrangements, if necessary in defiance of the law.