Need help? Call 0345 838 4074 Register Login

Accidents

Reportable accidents

The law imposes obligations on people involved in certain accidents on a road.

Reportable accidents are those where there's been injury or damage to:

  • Another person
  • Another vehicle or someone else's property
  • Roadside property
  • An animal in another vehicle or running across the road

If you're the driver of a vehicle involved in such an accident, you must:

1. Stop and remain at the scene for a reasonable period to allow anyone who is directly or indirectly involved in the accident to ask for details

2. Give your name and address and, if you're not the owner of the vehicle, the name and address of the owner, to anyone with reasonable grounds to ask

3. Give the identification marks of the vehicle to anyone who has reasonable grounds to ask

Failing to stop or report

If you don't stop or give your details at the scene of the accident, you must report it to the police in person as soon you can within 24 hours.

If any personal injury is caused to another person involved in the accident, you must produce a valid certificate of insurance. Otherwise, you should:

  • Report the accident to a police station within 24 hours; and
  • Take the insurance certificate to a police station as soon as possible within 7 days

It's also important to understand that you're obliged to do these things not only when you're directly involved in an accident, but also if your vehicle's 'presence' was a factor.

If you did provide all the required information at the scene of the accident, you won't need to report it to the police.

Related services

What is the law guide

The Desktop Lawyer law guide aims to present the law to you in a comprehensive yet jargon-free and easy-to-read format. Our law guide is constantly kept up to date with changes in business and family law by our team of in house solicitors, and includes information across all the legal jurisdictions in the UK.

Our law guide is free to use. Where we provide documents related to this area of law, or where they may help you with any legal issue in this area, they will be listed to the right of this message.

Our use of cookies

We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We would also like to set some optional cookies. We won't set these optional cookies unless you enable them. Please choose whether this site may use optional cookies by selecting 'On' or 'Off' for each category below. Using this tool will set a cookie on your device to remember your preferences.

For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our Cookie notice.

Necessary cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

Functionality cookies

We'd like to set cookies to provide you with a better customer experience. For more information on these cookies, please see our cookie notice.