Or, for those of us who can’t reverse a trailer to save ourselves (I’m putting my hand up here), maybe we uncouple the idea and push it back.
Back to a time when road safety wasn’t about getting a blurry photo in the post a week later, like a bad school photo, after a Tupperware bowl cut … it was about fear.
The sudden flash of white and black in the rear-view mirror.
The looming presence of a Mitsubishi V3000.
That nervous wait to see if the roof lights would flick on and the V3000 would kick into action like a teenager at a school social when that first hit of Lynx kicks in.
Because once upon a time, before camera caravans, cameras on sticks and dialling *555, we had the Ministry of Transport.
One team that ruled the road.
If you grew up in the ’70s or ’80s, I don’t need to explain the legend of the Flying Wedge. But for those of you who didn’t … let me.
The Mitsubishi V3000 wasn’t just a car; it was a rolling wall of authority.
Built like a tank, the design profile was made from tracing around a 30-60-90 set square, impossible to outrun unless you had wings.
Think KITT from Knight Rider. Think Batmobile on a budget.
If you saw one cresting the hill behind you, your little Corolla suddenly felt like a wheelbarrow with headlights.
But the cars were only half the fear factor. The other half was the MOT Mo.
This wasn’t a fashion choice; it was practically a requirement.
A thick, stern brush of hair above the lip that carried more authority than the uniform itself.
You could argue with an officer in uniform, but could you really argue with a moustache that said, “I’ve heard it all before, champ, so zip it”.
When the MOT was folded into the police in the early ’90s, it was sold as efficiency. One force, one system.
But something got lost. Road policing became just one job, among many.
Maybe it didn’t have the same movie-trailer appeal as chasing down armed robbers.
Cue the voiceover: “In a world where radar guns once ruled… one man and his mo kept the roads in line…”
But the Flying Wedges disappeared. The moustaches thinned out. And the theatre of being pulled over by a dedicated road cop was gone.
Now we’re moving into a new kind of road policing.
Camera trailers, 10 of them rolling out around the country. No signs to warn you, no officer waiting inside.
Automated, fitted with CCTV and alarms, popping up in places you don’t expect.
They can be parked tighter than vans, left longer, clocking up thousands of hours a month.
On paper, it makes sense. More cameras, more coverage, fewer crashes.
Evidence shows that hidden cameras are more effective at slowing people down.
And when you think about the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads each year, anything that makes us ease off the accelerator has to be a good thing. We can all raise our right foot to that.
But here’s the thing. There’s no moustache. There’s no Flying Wedge. No human presence leaning into your window with a pen, a carbon paper ticket book, and, as Roxette once sang… The Look.
The look that said: “Son, you’re in trouble.” There’s just a machine quietly doing its job. Efficient, detached, unblinking.
So yes, cameras have their place. But in my mind, so did the MOT officer.
Maybe it’s time for a reintroduction, like the brown kiwi being carefully returned to Kāpiti Island.
They could work alongside the new technology, think of a boomer with an iPhone.
Not always precise, sometimes unsure how they turned the torch on, but still getting the job done.
Because road safety is serious. The cameras, the fines, the rules… they’re not there to ruin your day, they’re there to save lives.
But sometimes, to really make people change, you need more than a machine.
You need presence. You need personality. You need a little drama.
So sure, let’s roll out the caravans for cameras. Let them sit quietly on the roadside and do their job.
But every now and then, maybe it’s time for the road slug and the lip slug to get together.
