London Cycle Hire

The dark blue bike is designed so it will be attractive to thieves

Presumably you meant the opposite?

Unlike the paris velib scheme the cost will come straight from central funds (transport for london) and advertising not.

No possibility for advertisers to negotiate one contract for the whole of London. They'd have had to deal with 33 local authorities plus TfL and they didn't fancy that.

Safety, the real issue though is.

But with cycling novices and tourists heading off into the capital's traffic on this hire bike - more accidents could the fear is there be.

The key stat that needs to improve is not absolute numbers of collisions--it's the collision rate. Absolute numbers of collisions may well go up if the scheme is a success and increases cycling. However, the collision rate in Paris went down, too. There is no reason to assume that it won't be the same thing in London.