Car Hit While Parked and the Driver Drove Off: What to Do

What to do in the first hour

Photograph everything before you move the car. Take wide shots showing where it is parked and which way it faces. Take close-ups of the damage with something in frame for scale.

Photograph any paint transfer, broken trim or plastic on the road too. Paint colour and the height of the impact are the two things that later help match another vehicle to yours.

Then look around while you are still there. Check the windscreen and under the wipers for a note. Knock on the nearest doors and ask the closest shop or pub whether anyone saw it.

Look up too. Note every camera within sight of the space: shop CCTV, a doorbell camera on a house opposite, a bus lane or council camera, a dashcam in a car that was parked nearby overnight. Write down where each one is. Footage gets overwritten, often within days, so the value of that list drops fast.

Do you have to report it to the police?

No. The legal duty sits on the driver who hit you, not on you.

Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 applies when a vehicle causes an accident that injures someone other than the driver, or damages another vehicle, an animal or roadside property. That driver "must stop and, if required to do so by any person having reasonable grounds for so requiring, give his name and address".

Say they do not give their details at the scene. Section 170(3) then says they "must report the accident". Section 170(6) says that has to be done at a police station or to a constable, "as soon as is reasonably practicable and, in any case, within twenty-four hours of the occurrence of the accident".

That 24-hour clock is theirs. It is not a deadline you have to meet, and nothing you fail to do on the first day forfeits a claim.

Failing to stop or failing to report is a criminal offence. On the licence side, DVLA's endorsement code AC10 (failing to stop after an accident) and AC20 (failing to give particulars or report an accident within 24 hours) each carry 5 to 10 penalty points and stay on a licence for four years from the date of the offence.

What a court actually imposes varies with the seriousness of the case, so treat any single fine or sentence figure you see quoted as a maximum rather than a going rate.

Why report it anyway

There are two practical reasons. First, insurers commonly ask for a police reference before they will treat the incident as a hit-and-run rather than an unexplained knock.

Second, you may one day claim through the Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB). The Untraced Drivers Agreement gives MIB the right to require you to report the matter to the police "as soon as reasonably practicable", and to co-operate with any investigation. Getting it logged early costs you nothing and closes off that argument.

For damage-only incidents most forces want an online report or a 101 call rather than 999. Ask for the reference number they give you and keep it with your photographs.

Telling your own insurer

Tell them, even if you decide not to claim. Gov.uk's guidance is that you must inform your insurance company about an accident regardless of whether you intend to make a claim, and most policies say the same. Reporting it and then choosing not to claim is normal; not reporting it and trying to claim later is where people come unstuck.

Comprehensive or third party only

This choice decides what happens next. Gov.uk puts it plainly: "Third party insurance is the legal minimum. This means you're covered if you have an accident causing damage or injury to any other person, vehicle, animal or property. It does not cover any other costs like repair to your own vehicle."

So if you are third party only, or third party fire and theft, there is no own-damage cover to claim on. There is no traceable driver to pursue either, and no realistic MIB route for damage alone, as the next chapter explains. That leaves you paying for the repair yourself. Comprehensive cover is the only policy type that pays out here.

What it does to your no-claims discount

This is the part that stings. The Financial Ombudsman Service explains that a "fault" claim is recorded in two situations: when the accident was the driver's fault, or when it was not their fault but the cost cannot be claimed from another party. Its own example is a parked car that is hit when the other driver cannot be found. When the other driver is untraced, there is nobody to recover from.

So a blameless hit-and-run on your parked car is normally recorded as a fault claim. The Ombudsman's guidance is that a fault claim is likely to reduce your no-claims discount if you have not protected it.

Two things can soften it. Neither is guaranteed.

• A protected no-claims discount. This normally means the discount itself is not cut when a fault claim is recorded. The Ombudsman is clear that this protects the discount, not the price. Your premium can still rise at renewal, because the incident itself changes how an insurer rates you.
• An uninsured driver promise. Several comprehensive policies refund your excess, the slice of any claim you pay yourself, and leave your no-claims discount alone if an uninsured driver hits you. Read the conditions before you count on it. AXA's version states "you'll need to provide us with the make, model and registration number of the car driven by the uninsured driver", and 1st Central's requires the other car's make, model and registration plus the driver's name and address. In a parked hit-and-run you usually have none of that, which is exactly when the promise stops applying. Check your own policy wording rather than assuming.

I would weigh the excess against the repair quote before claiming at all. If the excess is £400 and a bumper respray is £450, claiming can cost you more over the following few renewals than paying for the job outright.

If the driver is never traced: what the MIB can and can't do

The Motor Insurers' Bureau is the body that compensates victims of uninsured and untraced drivers. It says its funding comes from the motor insurance industry, through a compulsory levy on every insurer issuing motor cover, passed on in premiums. In effect, every motorist pays into it.

The catch for damage-only claims

If nobody was hurt, this is the part that decides it.

Clause 7 of the MIB Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017 is the one to read. MIB "is not liable for any claim, or any part of a claim, in respect of damage to property caused by or arising out of the use of an unidentified vehicle, unless" both of two things apply. First, an award for significant personal injury has been paid to a claimant in respect of the same event. Second, the loss for the property damage exceeds the specified excess, which the Agreement defines as £400.

"Significant personal injury" is defined in the same clause as bodily injury resulting in death, two or more nights of hospital in-patient treatment, or three or more sessions of hospital out-patient treatment.

Read those two conditions together and the answer for a typical parked-car case is deflating. A car hit while parked, with nobody in it and nobody hurt, will not normally meet the first condition at all. So MIB is very unlikely to pay for the damage.

The Agreement exists for untraced-driver injury claims, with property damage attached to them. It is not a fund for repairing dented cars.

The uninsured route is different. If the driver is later identified and turns out to have had no insurance, that falls under MIB's separate Uninsured Drivers Agreement, where the property-damage picture is not the same. So it is worth going back to your insurer and to MIB if a registration turns up later.

How to claim, and by when

If injury is involved and a claim is realistic, MIB requires you to notify the claim on its own claim form. In practice you register on MIB's online claim portal and complete the form there.

For any property-damage element, the Agreement requires "satisfactory evidence both of the fact of the damage as well as the cost of repair or replacement". Normally that means a detailed repair invoice with proof that you paid it, or a report from a suitably qualified expert, or making the car available for MIB to inspect while it is still damaged. Do not get the car repaired and then throw the paperwork away.

As for deadlines, the 2017 Agreement sets no separate clock of its own. Clause 3(1)(d) requires the claim to be made within the time limits that would apply to suing an identified driver in court. Those are the Limitation Act 1980 in England and Wales, and the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 in Scotland.

Broadly that means three years for personal injury and longer for property damage. The exact period depends on your circumstances and on when time starts running, so take advice rather than working to a number you read online. You will see a nine-month property-damage deadline quoted on some sites. That figure does not appear in the 2017 Agreement.

One scope point. The Agreement above covers Great Britain, and Northern Ireland has its own separate MIB Untraced and Uninsured Drivers Agreements, both dated 13 December 2023, with their own terms.

If the damage is bad enough to write the car off

A hard enough hit can cost more to put right than the car is worth. A shunted door pillar, a bent subframe, a crushed rear quarter: any of those can do it. If your insurer decides not to repair the car, it is written off and given a category that stays attached to it permanently. Our guide to insurance write-off categories explains what Cat A, B, S and N each mean, and which ones can legally go back on the road.

That matters in two directions. If you keep the car and have it repaired yourself, the category is recorded against the registration, and any future buyer running a history check will see it.

If you are replacing the car instead, start with a free car check on whatever you are about to buy. From the number plate alone it gives you the full MOT record, the tax position and running-cost estimates. A previous write-off, outstanding finance and stolen markers sit behind the paid comprehensive check rather than the free one. Either way, a report shows the car as it stands at the moment you run it, so run a fresh one before you hand over money.

No witnesses, no CCTV: realistic options

Be realistic about the odds of tracing the driver. With no registration number and no footage, there is very little for the police or your insurer to work with. If a week of asking around has produced nothing, the decision in front of you is repair versus excess. Not detective work.

Before you give up, a few things are worth doing.

• Ask for footage quickly, and politely. Shops, pubs and neighbours will often show you a clip on the spot if you ask the same day. Formal routes are slower. A subject access request only entitles you to information about you, so footage of your unattended car may not qualify at all, and the ICO's guidance allows an organisation a month to respond, extendable by up to two further months for complex requests, with other people in the frame often blurred out. Police can request footage directly, which is usually the faster route once you have a reference number.
• Post locally. A street WhatsApp group, a residents' Facebook group or a note through a few doors turns up dashcam clips surprisingly often, because someone parked nearby may have recorded it without knowing.
• Chase a partial registration properly. If a witness gives you part of a plate, hand it to the police and your insurer rather than trying to trace it yourself. Where you do have a full registration, DVLA can release registered keeper details to an individual who shows "reasonable cause", and gov.uk lists "finding out who was responsible for an accident" as an example of exactly that. It is done on form V888, with a fee set out on the form, and DVLA decides whether your reason qualifies.

What will not help: a number plate lookup on its own does not tell you who was driving, and no vehicle data service can hand a member of the public the keeper's name and address. That is DVLA's decision to make, through the process above.

This guide is part of our wider advice on running a used car, which covers insurance, servicing and the rest of the costs a purchase price never shows you.

Common questions