That's obviously not true. If it was the case, the Paris subway would forever be stopped.
What is true is that in France when someone reports an abandoned bag in a public place in the main cities, it will systematically be considered as suspect. It means that someone will first go visually inspect it. If it is deemed to present a risk, a detection dog will be brought. Then, if the detection dog smells something, it will be safely handled by the police bomb disposal unit. Thankfully - it turns a half an hour top operation into a significantly longer one - it is very rare to need to destroy a bag.
Also it is absolutely not illegal to check a lost wallet (or a lost bag actually) in France.
Funny you should ask. A few years back my wife and I were stuck in Reagan (an airport in D. C.) for a super-long layover. As I'm watching my first ever episode of Archer, I notice the family a row over gets up and walks down the concourse, leaving their bags. Now, I've heard a bit of their conversations as I've sat there, and I gather they're American and probably self-centered and clueless. Or maybe that's what the terrorists that just walked away from their explosives want me to think. Regardless, we're sitting at the gate and there's a gate agent right there, so I put this in the "not my job anymore" bucket.
It's been a few years, but I'll bet it was at least ten minutes before the agent called security. It was long enough that I was about to get up and ask, "ya know, I'm not the super-paranoid type, but don't you think you ought to give the dog a little practice sniffing bags?" The dog and an agent or two show up, give the bags a sniff, and wait for the owners to return. I was disappointed that there wasn't at least a little ass-chewing. I mean, what U. S. resident doesn't know not to do that? And if they don't, how about driving that lesson home?
But anyway, we don't get too worked up about a random bag lying around. Because in the U. S., thus far it hasn't been shown that it stands much of a chance of blowing up. My sympathy to countries that have not been so lucky.
what i would have liked to have read is something like "while uber low probability, i figured it'd be best to deal with this immediately" or "i knew the probability that this is a bomb was so low as to be statistically impossible, so i just ignored it", not the weird hedged middle road
Deciding I might be a terrorist because I went to the bathroom? That's what is absolutely batshit insane.
No, because you left a container large enough to hold a fair amount of explosives, a container that has been used in other parts of the world at airports to detonate explosives, and you just walked away from it. Tell me what you believe to be the sane response. But if you just want to go take a shit, by all means, do so.
And I'm with sibling comment: I don't let my bags out of my sight.
I think fretting over a bag past that point is a little much. Frankly, the crowded snaking lines leading up to the TSA are where one should be concerned.
Those suitcases full of explosives you are hallucinating about? Has NEVER HAPPENED.
> United Airlines Flight 629, registration N37559, was a Douglas DC-6B aircraft also known as "Mainliner Denver", which was blown up with a dynamite bomb placed in the checked luggage on November 1, 1955. - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_629
> An explosion at the New Tokyo International Airport (later renamed Narita International Airport) occurred on Sunday, 23 June 1985 at 06:19 UTC, killed two baggage handlers, and injured four. The bomb was intended for Air India Flight 301, with 177 passengers and crew on board, bound for Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok, Thailand. - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Narita_International_Ai...
Not recent, but not “NEVER”.
Also you got 1955 and 1985. 64 and 34 years ago. Checked luggage wasn't even inspected back then. It is now. Still stuff gets through.
Are you arguing here that we shouldn't have checked luggage? Those are your examples. Checked luggage. Not unattended luggage, which almost certainly has already been inspected anyway when going through security. What now? Do we ban checked luggage and carry on luggage even after both have been inspected?
I love all the downvotes from the haters and the crazy supposed examples that prove my point for me. Facts and reality are not important. What's important is hysteria and fearmongering, and to shut up anyone that talks rational sense or is interested in a reality based approach to threat management.
Yeah that's the argument. Someone's gonna plant the explosives while I'm in the bathroom.
You know what? That's never going to happen, it's never happened, and it's a crazy thing to imagine would ever happen. It's just hysterical paranoia and fearmongering to go on about someone planting a suitcase full of explosives in another suitcase in plain view of everyone during a few minutes when some guy is in the bathroom.
This fear and paranoia is actively harming society. Parents won't let their children walk to school or a friends house or play in the yard because they are convinced the children will be abducted by a mad kidnapper. So their kids become waddling obese paranoid kids fixed on their screens, depressed, miserable, high blood pressure, having been raised in a culture of fear, years shaved off their lives from the stress.
All these irrational things, none based on facts or reasonable threat assessment, are actively harming society, and the people pushing this fear are doing it intentionally. But to what aim?
There may be a handful of other places with ‘unattended baggage’ policies, but there is definitely nothing illegal about dropping your bag.
After the 2015 attacks one would guess. For a millenium at least, and well up into the early 21st century, a bag in public place in France it was just a bag -- and people could return it.
I'm pretty sure that's the case now too -- it's only "deemed to be a bomb" if it looks suspicious and somebody calls the cops. I'm sure people lose/forget bags with the same frequency in France as elsewhere, and the military/cops are not involved in the majority of cases...
How often do the bags turn out to be bombs? never?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
It's possible the person who recovered it saw it fall, but they didn't explain their actions or even identify themselves.
If the item is not hidden, not obviously suspicious, and is typical of the environment in which it was found, then it's unlikely to be a threat and can be inspected further.
Unattended bags are found all the time. There's no need for the military to be called in for all (or even most) of them. And even then, that's mostly the responsibility of the police than the armed forces.