For a while now, some dad friends I’m in a group text with have been complaining obsessively about the poor state of traffic safety in D.C. We all have young kids, and we would like them to not be run down by cars.

Traffic safety is a multi-dimensional process, and many key factors — like the trend toward bigger vehicles — are outside the hands of city government. But the city can and does establish speed limits and other rules governing how you are allowed to drive. These rules are enforced through various means, but we increasingly rely on automated traffic enforcement via cameras, which seems very sensible. Automated enforcement is more cost-effective, less prone to racial bias, and less likely to lead to encounters that are dangerous for either drivers or officers. But automated enforcement relies on capturing cars’ license plates, so miscreants have increasingly taken to either installing tinted shields that block the cameras’ operation or else using fake paper temporary tags.

Fak…