Tree roots are lifting my driveway — what should I do?

A ridge or hump running roughly toward the trunk; slabs tipped up at a lip you catch a toe on; cracks radiating from one corner; a driveway edge riding up while the center stays flat; asphalt domed with fine alligator cracking over the high point. Underneath it is almost always one or two large buttress roots, not a mat of fine ones. A root adds diameter every year and concrete does not move aside, so it comes down to which is stronger, and a live structural root beats four inches of unreinforced slab. This is a property-damage and trip-hazard problem, not a tree-failure problem, and the tree is usually in good health. The important inversion is that the repair is what creates the hazard: the roots lifting your driveway are the buttress roots on one side of the trunk, and cutting them is precisely how a stable tree becomes an unstable one.