Proposal: Addition of National Highways Traffic Officer Reporting Option in Waze

In the United Kingdom, National Highways deploys Traffic Officers to manage both emergency and routine incidents on the strategic road network. These officers are civilian personnel and are not police officers.

Currently, within Waze, patrol vehicles operated by National Highways Traffic Officers are frequently misreported by users as police vehicles. This creates confusion for drivers who receive notifications of “police reported ahead,” only to find that the vehicle in question belongs to a Traffic Officer rather than the police.

To address this, I propose the introduction of a new reporting option within the existing Police Report feature. Specifically:

A dedicated Traffic Officer icon (orange uniform/vehicle) should be made available to represent National Highways Traffic Officers.

When a Traffic Officer is mistakenly reported as police, other users should be able to confirm or correct the report, changing it from “Police” to “Traffic Officer.”

To avoid confusion, the Traffic Officer icon could use an orange uniform with a first aid badge, clearly distinguishing it from the existing blue police uniform and badge.

This improvement would reduce false police reports, increase accuracy for drivers using Waze, and ensure proper representation of the different authorities on UK roads.