We are running a little late to meet Richard Brunstrom, Britain’s most senior traffic rozzer, commonly known as the speed-camera mad mullah. And so the officer behind the wheel of the panda car taking us to our rendezvous does what any responsible professional would — he floors it.

I feel bad mentioning this — well, the young driver might now face a Taliban-style stoning for driving at 78mph down a clear motorway — but when I put it to Brunstrom that those of us who nudge a little over the limit are hardly Osama Bin Laden or Mad Frankie Fraser, he replies: “That is a common point of view but I think it is ridiculous. The law says you cannot drive over 70mph and if you are caught, you deserve it.” And he is off, condemning anyone “driving a ton of metal down the motorway and risking lives”.

Here we have the dilemma Brunstrom ignores: speeding can be deadly but we are so damn busy these days that we all speed. Even police officers. But he didn’t like a tabloid sting that zapped his grown-up daughter for allegedly speeding: “She did nothing wrong. That is not cricket.”

Brunstrom is head of the filth in the pedestrians’ republic of north Wales and wields one of the biggest truncheons in the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

Thanks to him, a driving tour of north Wales might now take in more speed cameras than sheep — except you probably won’t see the cameras as they could well be hidden. And while helping us with our inquiries, Brunstrom admits to devilish new wheezes to torture motorists: hiding cameras in Catseyes and even building a cell block for drivers over one of Britain’s busiest road tunnels.

On the political-correctness radar Brunstrom makes Margaret Hodge sound like Bernard Manning. He spent thousands of pounds investigating Anne Robinson’s anti-Welsh diatribe and here gives his first hint that he could haul the prime minister in for questioning over his alleged “hate crime” of ranting about “the f****** Welsh”.

Dixon of Dock Green would not recognise the modern police station. I wait for Brunstrom in the foyer of a neighbouring force HQ under a giant photo of Nelson Mandela with the slogan: “There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere.” And Nelson is spot on, particularly in north Wales, for those banged up for traffic offences. Brunstrom’s officers once doled out 4,200 tickets in a month; they get bonus points for their efforts.

So old cock, what is it about you and motorists? “I am not even sure what a motorist is. There are people who drive vehicles. And there are ethical and statutory rules about what is acceptable behaviour.”

Look, I’m happy to play the good cop for now but if you don’t start talking I might be forced to get nasty. What is it about you and “people who drive vehicles”? “I think that is ridiculous. I’m not anti-motorist, I am anti-death. Ever since 1829 it has been the duty of a police officer to protect life and property.”

While Brunstrom is certainly keen to protect property — particularly from orchid rustlers, one of his great concerns — he has been a shade less successful protecting life. Road fatalities across Britain fell 8% last year but, on his patch, the land of the speed camera, they shot up from 49 deaths to 58. “It is a statistical blip,” he says. “A lot of motorcyclists died that summer due to the good weather.”

Er, is he sure it wasn’t leaves on the road? Perhaps if the summer had been particularly drizzly, he would have blamed the bad weather. Still, let us not come over all Clarksonian: speeding does kill, particularly in built-up areas. But shouldn’t plods chase actual murderers rather than presuming all motorists are potential ones? “It is difficult to prevent murder. Really our job is to catch the culprit. With road policing you can prevent it.”

One sees his point, but is this a clever way of saying police concentrate on traffic because it is easy? He goes on about “men who think they have a human right to drive as fast as they want” but then says something interesting: “The roads have become a very lawless environment.”

What Brunstrom is driving at is that road policing has quietly become the favoured method of British police forces to tackle all forms of crime. “Traffic policing used to be, ‘Have you enough water for your washers, ma’am?’ Now we realise criminals are vulnerable on the road; if someone is about to rob a bank, they’re unlikely to tax or insure their car.”