NYC Mayor Eric Adams, at a Queens news conference Tuesday,...

NYC Mayor Eric Adams, at a Queens news conference Tuesday, announces a crackdown on the use of illegal license plates. Credit: Howard Schnapp

The phrase “traffic violence” has grown in use of late among safety advocates. It's a wider term than “road rage." It includes deliberate and even casual transgressions that can be just as dangerous as the anger that flares from being cut off.

Whatever the phrase, the concept of combating this behavior should catch on everywhere. Misdeeds that lead to injury and death — for motorists, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists — must be cracked down upon. It’s a critical mission on multiple fronts.

Policymakers showed the right idea in New York City last week when they touted a sensible new measure meant to keep miscreant motorists from getting away with endangering others by obscuring their license plates from detection by toll readers, speed cameras and police investigations. Mayor Eric Adams and Amazon announced that the nation’s corporate behemoth in online sales “will proactively search for and restrict the sale of smoke-screen license plate covers and tinted license plate covers to customers with a New York state address.” Selling those products is already illegal in the city. Less specifically, state vehicle law already bars the obscuring of plates, thus barring plate covers.

Taking on these “camera blockers,” as the products are known, is especially important because of what may lie ahead. That is, authorities need to use road surveillance technology to track and catch in real time those who weave, surge, and create close calls in traffic as if playing a video game. A pilot program to beef up camera surveillance, pushed by State Sen. John Brooks and the New York State Police, is still awaited. Brooks (D-Seaford) also sponsors a bill, yet to be acted on, that would increase penalties for those who play hide-the-plate.

Law enforcement also would do well to get after those with illegal tinted front windows, another gimmick to avoid visibility that can pose a danger to both cops and civilians.

Speeding and drunken driving remain horrific concerns. On Sunday, the death of 9-year-old Angel Salas was announced, one week after a BMW slammed into his father’s car on the Long Island Expressway in Farmingville. Cops said the BMW’s driver, Travis Dickson of Brooklyn, 27, was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated.

Recently, between Aug. 15 and Aug. 21, state troopers issued 25,199 tickets during a special “Speed Week” traffic enforcement campaign not only for excessive speed but other dangerous practices such as distracted driving and failing to move over and away from idle vehicles. In Nassau and Suffolk counties, the state police logged 758 speeding summonses plus six for DWI, 80 for distracted driving, 79 for seat-belt and child-seat violations, and 12 for failure to move over.

Every week merits this level of enforcement. Traffic violence is an everyday threat of which everyone seems increasingly aware. The push on all fronts has to intensify.

MEMBERS OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD are experienced journalists who offer reasoned opinions, based on facts, to encourage informed debate about the issues facing our community.

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