The Des Moines City Council recently decided to waste more of our tax dollars by installing speed cameras on most major off-ramps and other unspecified locations along Interstate 235 and Interstate 80. Why?

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Safety, of course!

Now, we’re not necessarily completely opposed to red light cameras, but that’s a completely different can of worms.

For starters, the red light cameras have been proven to work in reducing the amount of stupidity at intersections. There have been quite a few studies that demonstrate the efficacy of having them installed above busy intersections: people take notice, slow down and crashes are reduced significantly.

With the invention of airbags, the death rate from front-impact crashes has decreased around 20 percent in the last 30 years. However, deaths from side-impact crashes have increased to more than half of the overall total, and it’s not just because of the airbags. Trucks and SUVs appear on the road far more frequently than they used to. It’s simple physics: A greater number of heavier vehicles with higher ground clearance means more side-impact crashes at head level. Coupled with statistics that say one-third of red light runners are teenagers, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster, with death and head/neck/spinal cord injury rates skyrocketing.

But that’s not what we’re talking about: We’re specifically mentioning the speed cameras that will be installed along both interstate corridors before this year’s end.

Des Moines Police have estimated each of these cameras will generate around $100,000 in revenue for the city of Des Moines every year. That’s nice, we guess, considering they cost $40,000 a piece, not counting maintenance.

What’s ironic is that the state legislature had attempted to flat-out ban speed cameras in 2007, but ultimately failed. We hope they’ll try again. Soon.

Red light cameras are only on, supposedly, when the light is red, whereas a speed camera is on around-the-clock. If that doesn’t scream “1984,” we don’t know what does.

In other words, we don’t want the government wasting money while spying on us. It may be a public roadway, and the cameras typically give 5-10 mph of breathing room, but we’ve used Vista enough times to know that machines are by no means infallible. We’ll take lower tuition, thanks.

Do speed cameras reduce speeding? Sure, in places where the cameras are located. Does that mean we should put them on every stretch of public roadway? Absolutely not.

Then there’s the burden-of-proof issue: A police officer who cites you for speeding has witnessed you doing so, has the data to back it up and has physically pulled you over to say so. They’re trained to use their equipment, and can provide honest testimony against you in court.

A speed camera is a machine, and an inefficient one at that. A 2007 report by the Auditor General of Arizona showed that 47 percent of the detections in the first year of implementation were rejected because the driver, license plate or both were simply unclear, and that figure came from vendor data.

What’s even more interesting is a report from Swinton, England, where the town council voted to turn off the speed cameras. Since doing so, the number of accidents, injuries and fatalities have all gone down.

The hypothesis? Deactivated speed cameras means less erratic braking into, and less acceleration out of the areas monitored by speed cameras. The British government also announced a 40 percent cut in funding for these cameras two months ago, and other municipalities are expected to follow suit.

Now take that same erratic braking for those cameras, and pair it with Iowa’s winter weather, the slightest of which turns I-35 into equal parts bobsled run and demo derby.

No thanks.