Pontius, if by 'dinghies' you are referring to the hexagonal, double chamber rafts then yes they are still carried by some airlines in Australia onboard B737 (and other circa 100/150 seat aircraft) usually fitted to aircraft which have slides only at main doors yet fly beyond the permissible distance from land which exempts their carriage.
One company I worked for was only required to carry them on two routes- in that case the dinghies were stowed in the seat rows immediately aft of the overwing exits as they were too large for the overhead lockers. Others are permanently located in pull-down ceiling stowages. Both kinds I've been trained on are the type with a lanyard which when pulled releases a pin from the gas inflation bottle and they pretty much inflate instantly.
Re: Hudson/NTSB... the fact that one guy had his lifejacket on completely upside down tells me the difficulty is probably not with thejacket itself but the lack of attention to the safety card/demo of how to actually put it on. Compared to the 'old' lifejackets, today's "over the head, on strap round the waist" models ar eprobably as simple as you're going to get without resorting to marine "solid" types.
The red objects on the water are lifejackets from ferries; the yellow ones are aircraft type. I've never seen an inflatable lifejacket on a public ferry, they always seem to be the solid type (not changed much since they were used on the Titanic etc, it seems)