After a Collision: The Legal Duties Every Driver Must Follow (RTA 1988 Section 170)

Most drivers will have a collision at some point, and what happens in the minutes after decides whether it stays an insurance matter or becomes a criminal one. The duties are set in law - Road Traffic Act 1988 section 170, carried in the Highway Code as rules 286 and 287 - and “MUST” means exactly that. For fleets, these duties belong in every single driver’s induction, verbatim.

Rule 286: stop, identify, report

If you are involved in a collision that causes damage or injury to any other person, vehicle, animal or property, you MUST:

• Stop. If possible, stop in a place of relative safety. Driving on because “it was only a scrape” is the offence of failing to stop, not a judgement call.
• Give your own and the vehicle owner’s name and address, plus the vehicle’s registration number, to anyone with reasonable grounds for requiring them. For a company vehicle that means the driver’s details and the operator’s - one reason fleets keep a keeper-details card in every cab.
• Report to the police as soon as reasonably practicable, and in any case within 24 hours, if you did not give your name and address at the time. The classic trigger is the unoccupied parked car: nobody to exchange with, so the duty to report falls on the driver, and the clock runs from the collision, not from when someone notices.

Rule 287: injury plus insurance equals two more clocks

Where another person is injured and the insurance certificate is not produced at the scene - to a police officer or anyone with reasonable grounds to request it - the driver MUST report the collision to police as soon as possible and in any case within 24 hours, AND produce the insurance certificate for the police within seven days. Two separate deadlines, both statutory. Fleets running paperless insurance should think about how a driver “produces” a certificate at the roadside; the answer belongs in the accident procedure, not in an argument at a police station.

The scope is wider than “car crash”

The duty triggers on damage or injury to any other person, vehicle, animal or property - the gatepost clipped on a farm delivery, the parked car brushed in a tight street, the dog that ran out. Property damage with nobody present is the classic failure: the driver who cannot find the owner still owes the exchange, which is why the 24-hour police report exists as the backstop. “Anyone having reasonable grounds” to require the details is deliberately broad - the other driver, the property owner, a police officer - and the stopped-in-relative-safety qualifier recognises that a live lane is not the place for it: stop, make the scene safe, then do the exchange. For the office, the same event starts two more clocks that sit outside the Code but inside the operation: insurer notification within policy terms, and the O-licence maintenance and incident records that a DVSA examiner will ask to see.

What failing costs

The endorsement table prices the failures. AC10, failing to stop after an accident, and AC20, failing to give particulars or report within 24 hours, each carry 5 to 10 penalty points and stay on the driving record for 4 years from the date of the offence. Against a clean licence that is most of the way to a totting ban in one bad decision; for a professional driver it is also a conduct conversation with the Traffic Commissioner waiting to happen. The points are not the point, though: leaving the scene converts a civil claim into a prosecution, and no delivery is urgent enough to justify that trade.

The fleet accident procedure

1. Stop and make safe - relative safety first; the scene is a workplace now.
2. Exchange: driver name and address, operator name and address, registration number. Photograph everything; note witnesses.
3. No details exchanged? Report to police within 24 hours - and log who reported, when, and the reference.
4. Injury collision: same 24-hour report plus insurance production within 7 days.
5. Tell the office before leaving the scene, so the insurer notification and the O-licence record start the same hour.

The drivers who get this right are not the ones with the best reflexes; they are the ones who were handed a written procedure before they ever needed it. Print rules 286 and 287, put them in the cab pack, and walk every new driver through the 24-hour and 7-day clocks.

Sources

• The Highway Code: breakdowns and incidents (275 to 287) - GOV.UK
• Endorsement codes and penalty points - GOV.UK