America’s worst transportation disaster in nearly a decade wasn’t a plane crash or a train crash. The victims died in a high-speed car accident. The only newsmaking aspect of the stretch limousine that crashed in central New York over the Columbus Day weekend was the death toll. The smashup claimed 20 souls, rather than the usual one, two or three people killed in such instances.

Otherwise, it was similar to everyday fatal car wrecks — that is, it was preventable, but for the fact that New York, progressive as it is about public health, does not take violent crime by vehicle seriously.

Almost everything that happened in Schoharie, a small town west of Albany, Saturday should not have happened. The result of multiple failures of lawmaking and enforcement was tragedy: The limo careened through a stop sign at high speed, killing two pedestrians and, after hitting a parked car and an embankment, all 18 occupants of the vehicle.

First, consider the vehicle. Seventeen of the dead, including four adult sisters, had piled into a modified limousine. The vehicle was originally a Ford SUV, but a third party modified it. This contraption was nearly two decades old and had failed an inspection just a month ago, when the state declared its brakes and tires unsafe. Violations on these supposedly “luxury” conveyances are particularly serious. Modification to an assembly-line vehicle renders its factory-produced safety systems less useful.

Second, the driver. Scott Lisinicchia had a checkered driving history. In 2015, he received a $125 ticket for driving while talking on a cellphone. The year before, he received a ticket for opening a door into traffic — another behavior that’s potentially fatal, especially for nearby cyclists. Over the previous three years, he racked up three other tickets, according to the region’s Post-Star newspaper.

Then, too, Lisinicchia wasn’t properly licensed to drive the stretch limo. This isn’t just an administrative oversight. As Jeffrey J. Kroll, a personal-injury lawyer, told the Poughkeepsie Journal, an untrained driver simply cannot safely operate such an unwieldy, specialized vehicle. The vehicle was more like a truck than a car: difficult to stop and turn.

Third, seat belts. New York doesn’t require adult passengers in the back of limos to wear them. No safety reason exists for this. If anything, the fact that limo modification renders the vehicle less able to withstand impact makes the argument for seat belts even stronger.

We don’t yet know what caused the Schoharie crash. In the wake of the tragedy, the state has already come down hard. Wednesday, state police arrested Nauman Hussain, one of the principals of Prestige Limo, the fly-by-night company that owned the SUV, and charged him with negligent homicide.

But by this point, the state has already fallen down, in both lawmaking and enforcement. After the failed inspection, the SUV should have had a sticker affixed to it indicating that a driver, with no passengers, could operate the vehicle only for the purposes of repairs.

Lisinicchia, too, might have refrained from driving illegally if he had risked a bigger penalty. Yet unlicensed truck drivers who kill typically face only misdemeanor charges. The Republican state Senate passed a bill sponsored by Queens Democrat Michael Gianaris that would make it a felony. But the Democratic Assembly, worried about the impact on minorities, resists.

Finally, a seat-belt law for limos may have mitigated the crash itself, saving several lives.

Twenty deaths are unusual only because they happened all at once. In April 2017, Streetsblog reported that 24 pedestrians and cyclists had been killed by unlicensed drivers in the previous three years alone.

The body count has increased since then. In June, in Brooklyn, unlicensed driver Junior Aguilar killed motorcyclist Lorenzo Fonerin Arias, and unlicensed driver Leonel Ortega-Flores slammed into pedestrian Jose Cardoso, killing him. In March, Dorothy Bruns, having previously racked up eight tickets for dangerous driving, mowed down two children in Park Slope; a third, unborn child died later.

State law should be clear and consistently enforced: A person driving a vehicle without the proper license should have that vehicle seized.

In the hands of the wrong person, a vehicle is a deadly weapon. A person who injures or kills while driving without a proper license or inspection should face felony assault or homicide charges.

Finally, drivers who rack up speeding or other moving violations repeatedly should lose the privilege of driving.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, from which this essay was adapted.