Has any pilot out there ever experienced any occasion on which life jackets have actually been needed? Or indeed slide rafts for that matter? How many lives have been saved by these devices? Probably none. The costs of them are huge in weight and maintenance/inspection requirements.
Several years ago I met a man who had been injured in an accident in which a Japan Air LInes DC8 had landed in the sea short of SFO. All the pax had been evacuated by boat and he had been injured by the fact that he had been forced to remove his shoes and his feet had been splintered by poor woodwork on the evacuating boat. I took up the matter with the CAA and as a result they changed their rule that you had to take your shoes off. It all goes to show that no one is normally doing any useful risk assessment.
Safety is always about managing risks. If you assess the risks of landing on sea you will find that all of those useless devices like life jackets and sliderafts are pointless and very expensive. I suggest that they be removed from aircraft.
Let us hope that this stimulates a debate on waht is actually needed to ensure the highest standards of safety. You can be sure that some of the regulators do not have much clue about waht that actually means.