A highway patrol is a police unit, detail, or law enforcement agency created primarily for the purpose of overseeing and enforcing traffic safety compliance on roads and highways within a jurisdiction. They are also referred to in many countries as traffic police, although in other countries this term is more commonly used to refer to foot officers on point duty who control traffic at junctions. In the United States, some state-level law enforcement agencies are called “state police” or “state patrol” rather than “highway patrol,” although these agencies often perform similar functions.

Duties of highway patrols or traffic police may include the following: