My first thought was they were to be used to help cross the street in heavy traffic. You grab one, throw it into traffic, and after all the cars stop in a pile, you walk across.

the orange color was to give the driver a slight chance to see it and avoid it.

Free Orange Bikes to Fight Traffic Woes June 8, 2001 10:31 am EST

VILNIUS (Reuters) - The tinkle of bicycle bells in Lithuania's capital on Friday rang in the launch of a municipal plan to fight traffic congestion with bright orange bikes.

Vilnius, a city of ubiquitous car alarms and picturesque but narrow cobbled streets, decided to offer the use of 500 bicycles free to anyone in the city from dawn until dusk, when they have to be returned.

"This is a way to solve traffic congestion and parking problems in the city center... where the bicycle travels faster than a car," said Mayor Arturas Zuokas, at the launching of his "The Bike's Invented, Ride Orange" campaign.

Skeptics said the free bike campaign will be a bonanza for thieves, but Zuokas -- set on making Vilnius a bike-friendly city like Copenhagen or Amsterdam -- said the move was a good test for community morals.

A similar experiment in Amsterdam in 1966 proved short-lived. Anti-establishment groups placed bikes they had painted white across the city, with the idea that anyone could pick them up for free and set them down after use.

Some were taken permanently and repainted, while the police impounded others on the basis that ownerless bikes were street rubbish.

-- Anonymous, June 09, 2001