I see the message You cannot edit this segment. You may only edit segments in your driving area.’ on virtually everything I look at, with the exception of roads pretty-much on my front door. I have just tested some very local roads (which I drive by very regularly) to check, but sure enough I get the same message. Any idea why that would be?
Waze allows you to edit any road with an L1 lock, within 1 mile of any road you’ve traveled along in the past 90 days with the Waze app open, as long has your mobile phone has signal.
If the above is correct in your situation, and you still can’t edit the roads, then I’m not sure what else it could be…
Yep, I’ve travelled thousands of miles in the last 90 days and all the roads I try are within the editable areas layer, but still I can’t edit most of them
This is, unfortunately, a long-standing problem. You always get the same error message, regardless of why you can’t edit the segment.
The most likely answer is that the segments are locked above your editing level. If you select a segment you will see the lock level in the left-hand panel. Segments may be manually locked by an editor to prevent damage or protect a complicated setup. But there is also an auto-locking system: the top 2% or so of the busiest segments in the country will be automatically locked between level 2 and level 4.
I see, yes the one I am looking at is locked at L4, so I just have to request the change? (auto-locked)
Quite. 
You can post an unlock request in the UK Editor Requests subforum. Don’t forget to read the Posting Guidelines 