WE HAVE ENTERED a new era of road safety ads.

Gone, apparently, are the blood-chilling cautionary tales of the 1990s and 2000s where cars would launch off the road in improbable ways, taking out entire classrooms of schoolchildren while an entirely inappropriate hit song played in the background. Now, the RSA is trying a different tactic: bullying people who can’t drive. 

The Road Safety Authority of Ireland’s latest ad campaign tells the story of a young man who has lost his driver’s licence through some vehicular indiscretion and now relies on others for lifts. Its voiceover warns: “When you lose your licence, you become reliant on other people to take you where you need to go and you become a burden for others”. You know, that classic advertising strategy where you tell people sitting at home that they should confine all their activities to the back garden. Coke tried something similar in 1970s.

Stunningly, the one-in-five Irish adults who don’t drive weren’t exactly thrilled to be made to feel like an albatross around society’s neck, and cyclist groups, disability groups and even TDs have all voiced their displeasure at the ad. The RSA do appear to be sticking to their guns however, and the ad can still be seen on their Twitter account. 

The RSA’s messaging – that in an ideal world those who don’t drive should be locked in the attic due to their incompatibility with the roadworthy – also seems at odds with the government’s own efforts, such as they are, to encourage the public at large to make more use of bike lanes and public transport. It also seems out of kilter with any overriding principle of… being sound.

If anything, the giving and getting of lifts is an essential part of the Irish experience. There is no more intimate a conversational setting that the front and passenger seat of a car over the course of a 12-minute drive to a bus-stop. The idea that Irish people resent and disdain giving lifts is deeply at odds with a wide array of anecdotal evidence (I have no hard data on whether people truly resent giving lifts to friends and family who need them, but I suspect that the RSA doesn’t either).

Maybe the open road isn’t the place for nervous drivers who have only gotten their licence because they were afraid everyone would think they were a loser otherwise. As an approach to road safety, this one feels like the officialised version of those Facebook groups where drivers warn each other about speed cameras. And besides, just about everyone in the country has taken a lift at one time or another to avoid the kind of road crime that the Road Safety Authority should be concerned with preventing. Lifts are an essential part of road safety. 

None of this is to say that the ad won’t work, mind you. Sure, it lacks the unforgettable trauma of past campaigns, but you also shouldn’t underestimate the impact of peer pressure on young people. And they’re already under so much other pressure, so it’s probably smartest for the RSA to hit them now, while they’re down.

When you lose your licence, you become reliant on other people to take you where you need to go and you become a burden for others.
If you get caught drink or drug driving, you will be disqualified 🚫
🔗 https://t.co/bqecGYVfkN#RoadSafety #DriveSafely #VisionZero pic.twitter.com/fs9iQZtJIi

— RSA Ireland (@RSAIreland) August 19, 2024

There was further disappointing news for Dublin’s hospitality sector as popular Japanese restaurant, late bar and karaoke venue Ukiyo announced it would be closing its doors after 20 years.

In their death rattle, the restaurant’s ownership wrote that the “margins in our business are now so meagre that there is no future for us and so many more of our fellow businesses”. Three other restaurants in the same part of Dublin - Dylan McGrath’s Brasserie Sixty6, Rustic Stone and Bonsai Bar – shut their doors last week citing the same system in decline. 

Little separates Ukiyo from the dozens of other well-loved Dublin locations which have disappeared in the last decade or so, and on some level it feels arbitrary to treat this latest spate of closures as an inflection point rather than another node of data in the seemingly relentless gutting of Dublin. Am I writing about Ukiyo because I have some personal connection to the venue? Was Ukiyo my final night out before the Covid pandemic landed in Ireland? Did my father, on that same night, make me take a seat halfway through Mack The Knife because I “wasn’t performing it right”? None of that is your concern. With each closure, however, there will be those in Dublin who feel that little bit less connected to their city and that little bit more concerned about what there is to replace all that has been lost (it’s not always hotels, but a lot of the time, it’s hotels).

All cities are permanently in a state of flux and evolution, and nobody expects Dublin to remain the same forever. The protracted decimation of the city’s clubs, restaurants, coffeeshops and bars, however, does not feel like a natural reinvention, but the culmination of a vision for the city that seeks to eschew identity in the name of facilitating as much tourism as possible.

It is a notable parallel that one or two streets over from last week’s four restaurant closures, Dame Street at large will be closed to traffic for a few hours on Friday while an American College Football game takes place at the Aviva Stadium. It is expected that thousands of Americans will be in attendance, and there are even rumours that at some stage the PA system might play I’m Shipping Up To Boston by The Dropkick Murphys. Wouldn’t that be a turn up for the books. 

Still, if Dublin continues down this trajectory it’ll be good news for the RSA. At least nobody will be stuck for a lift when there’s nowhere left to go.