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Article · 13 min read
Someone undertook me and hit my car: who is at fault?
Hit by a car passing on your left? What Highway Code rules 163 and 268 really say, how insurers argue lane position, and how to prove your side.
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These ranking factors show how the article has been structured for real accident-claim decisions: immediate action first, UK-specific process detail and a clear compliance boundary.
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Advice is framed around UK accident management, credit hire, credit repair, engineer inspection and at-fault insurer dialogue rather than generic motoring tips.
local relevance
Evidence window
Where CCTV, dashcam, witness memory or repair inspection timing matters, the article explains the window and why delay weakens the file.
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E-E-A-T
Quick answer
If a car or van came past you on your left and hit you, the starting point is that the undertaking driver has the harder case to defend. The Highway Code is clear that overtaking is normally done on the right. Rule 267 tells motorway drivers to overtake only on the right. Rule 268 tells them not to overtake on the left, and not to move into a lane on their left in order to overtake. On ordinary roads and dual carriageways, Rule 163 permits passing on the left in only two narrow situations. A driver who came up your nearside and collided with you is usually the one who departed from the standard expected of a competent and careful driver.
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Someone undertook me and hit my car: who is at fault?
If a car or van came past you on your left and hit you, the starting point is that the undertaking driver has the harder case to defend. The Highway Code is clear that overtaking is normally done on the right. Rule 267 tells motorway drivers to overtake only on the right. Rule 268 tells them not to overtake on the left, and not to move into a lane on their left in order to overtake. On ordinary roads and dual carriageways, Rule 163 permits passing on the left in only two narrow situations. A driver who came up your nearside and collided with you is usually the one who departed from the standard expected of a competent and careful driver.
That said, undertaking is not automatically negligent, and you need to know that before you speak to anybody's insurer. There is no offence called undertaking anywhere in UK road traffic law. Section 38(7) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 makes the position clear: failing to observe a Highway Code rule does not by itself create criminal liability, but the failure can be relied on by any party in civil or criminal proceedings as tending to establish or disprove liability. So the other side will do one of two things. They will argue their manoeuvre fell inside a permitted exception (slow-moving queues, or you signalling to turn right), or they will argue you caused the impact by drifting left, straddling the lane line, or changing lanes into them.
Right now, in order. Stop. Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 requires the driver to stop and, if required by any person with reasonable grounds for asking, give their name and address, the name and address of the vehicle owner, and the vehicle's identification marks. If details were not given at the scene, the collision must be reported at a police station or to a constable as soon as is reasonably practicable and in any case within twenty-four hours. Photograph the road, not just the cars. Get the lane markings, the resting position of both vehicles and any debris in the same frame. Then secure your dashcam file before the loop recording overwrites it.
After that, the practical question is how you keep working and moving while your vehicle is off the road. CityGrip Accident Claims is an accident management company for non-fault car and van drivers, including private hire, PCO and minicab drivers. We arrange recovery from the scene, secure storage, an independent engineer's inspection, repair coordination, a like-for-like replacement vehicle and the correspondence with the at-fault driver's insurer. Those costs are pursued from that insurer rather than charged to you, subject to liability being established and to normal eligibility checks. We do not deal with personal injury in-house. Injury enquiries are referred to authorised legal partners, and only with your separate written consent.
Whose fault is it if someone undertakes me and hits my car?
Civil liability turns on negligence, which means asking whether each driver fell below the standard of a reasonably competent and careful driver, and whether that failure caused the damage. Insurers and courts use the Highway Code as the working benchmark for that standard. On a motorway, Rule 264 says you should drive in the left-hand lane when the road ahead is clear and return to it once safely past slower vehicles. Rule 137 says the same for a two-lane dual carriageway, and Rule 138 for three or more lanes. Rule 267 restricts overtaking to the right, and Rule 268 prohibits overtaking on the left or moving left to overtake. A driver who ignores all of that and hits you carries the obvious burden.
There is a criminal layer running alongside, and it is worth understanding because people confuse the two. Section 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 makes it an offence to drive a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place without due care and attention, or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road. That is the offence a reckless undertaker is most likely to face. The DVLA endorsement codes CD10, CD20 and CD30 all carry three to nine penalty points and stay on the driving record for four years from the date of the offence. In many cases the matter is disposed of by fixed penalty rather than court, and points within the statutory range are set by the fixed penalty scheme or by the court.
The two systems do not decide each other. The police may take no action at all in a damage-only collision, and that is common. A criminal charge requires proof beyond reasonable doubt, while your civil claim is decided on the balance of probabilities, meaning more likely than not. So a decision not to prosecute is not a finding that the other driver was blameless, and you should never let an insurer present it that way. Equally, if they are prosecuted and convicted, that conviction is strong support for your civil claim but does not remove the need to deal with any allegation that you contributed to the collision.
DETAIL
03
Section 3 of the walkthrough.
When is passing on the left actually allowed?
Rule 163 sets out the two circumstances in which passing on the left is acceptable on ordinary roads. The first is where the vehicle in front is signalling to turn right and there is room to pass on its left. That exception exists because of Rule 179, which tells a right-turning driver to position just left of the middle of the road, or in the marked space for right-turning traffic, and to leave room for other vehicles to pass on the left where practicable. The second is queuing traffic: you should stay in your lane when traffic is moving slowly in queues, but if the queue on your right is moving more slowly than you are, you may pass on the left.
Rule 268 carries an equivalent carve-out for motorways. In congested conditions where adjacent lanes are moving at similar speeds, traffic in the left-hand lanes may sometimes move faster than traffic to the right, and in those conditions you may keep up with the traffic in your lane even if that means passing vehicles in the lane to your right. The rule then adds the crucial limit: do not weave in and out of lanes to overtake. That distinction is the whole argument in most of these claims. Staying in your lane while it happens to move faster is permitted. Deliberately moving into the left-hand lane to get past someone is not.
Some left-side passing is not permitted at all, and if that is what happened your position is stronger. Rule 141 says you should not drive in a bus lane during its hours of operation unless the signs say otherwise. Rule 269 says drivers MUST NOT use a hard shoulder except in an emergency, or where directed by police, traffic officers or a traffic sign. Rule 258 says drivers MUST NOT drive in a lane closed by red flashing signals and a red X. If the vehicle that hit you was in a bus lane, on a hard shoulder or in a closed lane when it came alongside, note that in your account and capture the signage in your photographs.
Permitted: the vehicle ahead is signalling right and there is room to pass on its left (Rule 163)
Permitted: your lane is genuinely moving faster than the slow queue to your right and you stay in your lane (Rules 163 and 268)
Not permitted: moving into the left-hand lane specifically in order to get past (Rule 268)
Not permitted: weaving between lanes to make progress (Rule 268)
Not permitted: passing in a bus lane during its operating hours (Rule 141), on the hard shoulder (Rule 269) or in a red X closed lane (Rule 258)
What if they say I was straddling the line or changing lanes myself?
This is the standard defence, and you should expect it. The other insurer will say their driver was lawfully making progress in a faster-moving nearside lane, and that you moved into them. They will lean on Rule 133, which requires you to use your mirrors and, if necessary, take a quick sideways glance before changing lane so that you do not force another road user to change course or speed. They may also argue you were sitting in the wrong lane in the first place, using Rule 264 or Rule 137, on the basis that you should have been in the left-hand lane and were lane-hogging. Both arguments are about your lane position, not theirs.
The way this actually gets tested is through the damage profile, because contact points and impact angles tell a story that neither driver can talk their way around. Damage concentrated on your front nearside corner, with the other vehicle's damage running down its offside from the rear forwards, tends to support the case that you moved left into a vehicle already alongside. Damage to your rear nearside quarter, rear wheel arch or nearside rear door, with their damage at their front offside corner, tends to support the case that they came up your inside and clipped you. Paint transfer direction, scrape striation and the debris field on the carriageway all feed into that reading.
Do not assume this is all or nothing. Section 1(1) of the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945 provides that where a person suffers damage partly through their own fault and partly through the fault of another, the claim is not defeated, but damages are reduced to the extent the court thinks just and equitable having regard to the claimant's share in the responsibility. In practice that produces split liability findings, and insurers frequently propose a split early to close a file cheaply. Do not agree to any apportionment before someone has looked at the footage, the photographs and the damage mapping on both vehicles.
How do I prove where I was in my lane?
Start with an honest audit of your camera coverage, because a single front-facing dashcam often does not prove what you need it to prove. A forward camera shows the road ahead and the lane markings running away from you, but the markings pass under the bonnet and out of frame exactly where your own wheels are. It shows you were travelling in a lane. It rarely shows, on its own, whether your nearside wheels crossed the line in the second before impact. What it does capture very well is the other vehicle appearing in your left periphery, its closing speed, and whether it moved out of a lane to your left rear.
Fill the gaps deliberately. A rear-facing camera is the single most useful addition in an undertaking case, because it captures the approach along your nearside and shows the other vehicle's lane position before contact. A cabin camera with a wide lens often picks up the nearside wing mirror, your steering input and the audible indicator, which answers the two questions the other insurer will ask. If your camera writes a GPS overlay, that gives you speed and heading. Export the original file from the memory card rather than filming the screen with your phone, and check that the camera clock is accurate, because a wrong timestamp gives the other side something to attack.
Then chase evidence that will not wait for you. Modern vehicles with lane departure warning, blind spot monitoring or autonomous emergency braking may hold event data that supports where you were positioned. Buses, coaches, HGVs and delivery vans carry multi-camera systems, so take the fleet number and operator name if one was near you. Shop and forecourt CCTV, bus lane enforcement cameras and local authority traffic cameras all have short retention periods, so a written request needs to go out within days, not weeks. Take witness names and mobile numbers at the scene, and write your own account the same day while lane positions, signage and speeds are fresh.
Photograph both vehicles in their resting positions with the lane markings visible in the same frame
Photograph the damage on both vehicles close up, including scrape direction and paint transfer
Photograph the debris field, gouge marks and any tyre scuffs on the carriageway
Photograph the lane signage, any bus lane markings, hard shoulder or overhead gantry signals
Save the dashcam file to a separate device immediately, before loop recording overwrites it
Note the road, direction of travel, lane you were in, the speed you were doing and whether your indicators were on
06DETAILKey takeaway
What should I do in the first twenty-four hours?
The legal obligations come first. Under section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 the driver must stop and give their name and address, the owner's name and address and the vehicle's identification marks to anyone with reasonable grounds for requiring them. If for any reason those details were not given, the accident must be reported, and section 170(6) requires that 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. Failing to comply is itself an offence, so do not let a heated roadside conversation stop you completing that step properly.
Be careful with your language while you do it. Apologising at the scene is human, and insurers know that, but a written or recorded statement that reads as an admission is genuinely damaging. Describe what happened factually: which lane you were in, your speed, where the other vehicle came from, where it struck you and what you did. Do not speculate about what you might have done wrong and do not agree to a version of events read out to you over the phone by the other party's insurer. If they call you directly before you have taken advice, you are entitled to say you will respond in writing once your evidence is collated.
Notify your own insurer even if you do not intend to claim on your policy. Almost every motor policy requires notification of any incident, and failing to notify can cause problems later regardless of who was at fault. Notifying is not the same as claiming, and telling them you are pursuing the at-fault party through an accident management route keeps your options open. If you want the driving itself investigated, footage can be submitted to the police through Operation Snap schemes run by individual forces, or through the National Dash Cam Safety Portal, which routes uploads and witness statements to the relevant force.
What if the police take no action against the other driver?
A damage-only collision on a busy road very often ends with no prosecution, and drivers read that as a verdict on fault. It is not. Prosecutors have to prove a careless driving charge under section 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 beyond reasonable doubt, and they have to weigh whether a prosecution is in the public interest. Your civil claim runs on a different and lower standard: the balance of probabilities. Evidence that would leave a criminal court unsure can still be more than enough to establish civil liability against the driver who came up your inside.
Section 38(7) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 is the provision that ties this together, and it is worth understanding in your own words. It says a failure to observe a Highway Code provision does not of itself make you liable to criminal proceedings, but that any such failure may be relied on by any party in proceedings, civil or criminal, as tending to establish or negative any liability in question. So the Highway Code rules on overtaking are not offences you can be charged with breaking. They are evidence, available to both sides, about what a careful driver should have done.
The practical consequence is simple: do not put the claim on hold waiting for a police decision. Submit your footage if you want the driving looked at, but progress the civil side in parallel. The time limits are generous but not unlimited. Section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980 gives six years from the date the cause of action accrued for an action founded in tort, which covers vehicle damage and associated losses. Section 11 gives three years for personal injury, running from the date the cause of action accrued or the date of knowledge if later.
What happens if the undertaking driver is uninsured or drove off?
If you have their registration, the vehicle can be checked against the Motor Insurance Database to see whether it was insured at the time. Where the driver is identified but has no valid policy, a claim can be pursued through the Motor Insurers' Bureau under the Uninsured Drivers' Agreement 2015. Vehicle damage is recoverable under that agreement, and a supplementary agreement removed the earlier exclusion that blocked recovery where the claimant's own vehicle was uninsured. There are strict notification and cooperation requirements, including reporting the incident to the police, so the claim needs handling properly from the start rather than after months have passed.
Where the vehicle is never identified, because the driver undertook you, clipped you and kept going, the Untraced Drivers' Agreement 2017 applies instead, and it is in force for accidents from 1 March 2017. The property damage position under that agreement is much tighter, and this catches people out. Compensation for property damage caused by an unidentified vehicle is only payable where the claimant has also been awarded a sum for significant personal injury, and it is subject to a specified excess of £400. Significant personal injury is defined by reference to death, a stay of two nights or more in hospital, or three or more sessions of outpatient treatment.
That is exactly why the police report matters so much in a hit-and-run undertaking case, and why chasing third-party CCTV in the first few days can be decisive. If a bus camera, a shop camera or another motorist's dashcam captured the registration plate, the claim moves from the untraced route into the uninsured route or, better still, straight to an identified insurer. Get the report reference number, note the officer's collar number if one attends, and keep a written log of every enquiry you make and every date you made it. That log becomes useful evidence of reasonable steps taken.
DETAIL
09
Section 9 of the walkthrough.
How does the claim actually run once liability is in play?
The first job is getting the vehicle off the road safely and into somewhere secure. If it is not driveable, recovery is arranged from the scene or from wherever the police or a recovery operator have left it, and the vehicle goes into secure storage rather than an open compound. That matters for two reasons: it protects the vehicle from further damage or theft, and it preserves the physical evidence in an undertaking case, where the scrape direction, contact height and paint transfer on the nearside may need to be inspected and photographed again later if the other insurer disputes lane position.
An independent engineer then inspects the vehicle and produces a report on the damage, the repair method and cost, and whether the vehicle is economically repairable or a total loss. That report is the backbone of the claim against the at-fault insurer, and in a contested undertaking case it does double duty, because the contact points and impact angles it records feed directly into the liability argument. If the vehicle is repairable, repairs are coordinated with an approved repairer using correct parts and methods. If it is a total loss, the valuation is argued on the evidence of comparable vehicles rather than accepted at the first figure offered.
Alongside that, all correspondence with the third-party insurer is handled for you: presenting the claim, serving the evidence, responding to allegations about your lane position, and negotiating liability. Many insurers and providers work within the ABI General Terms of Agreement, a voluntary inter-industry framework that sets out agreed processes and standardised rates for replacement vehicles in non-fault claims, which helps keep disputes and delays down. Your job in all of this is to hand over the evidence promptly and answer questions honestly. Everything else, including the arguments about whether you straddled a line, is dealt with on your behalf.
Will I get a replacement car or van, and who pays for it?
If you are the non-fault driver, the aim is that you are put back into a vehicle quickly and that the cost is recovered from the at-fault driver's insurer rather than taken from you. That is what a credit arrangement means in this context: the replacement vehicle is provided on credit terms and the charges are pursued from the party responsible for the collision. It is not a rental you are expected to fund. The vehicle should be like for like, meaning broadly comparable in size and specification to the one you lost the use of, so a van driver gets a van and a family car gets a car.
Two honest qualifications apply, and any provider who leaves them out is not being straight with you. First, this depends on liability. If the other side dispute fault and the evidence is genuinely finely balanced, the position has to be assessed before a replacement vehicle is provided on that basis. Second, it depends on eligibility and need, including your duty to keep losses reasonable. You should take the replacement only for as long as you actually need it, tell us promptly when your own vehicle is repaired and ready, and return the replacement without delay. Keeping it longer than necessary weakens the recovery.
For private hire, PCO and minicab drivers there is an extra requirement that ordinary providers often get wrong. A vehicle used for private hire work has to be properly licensed and insured for that use, so a standard courtesy car is no use to you at all: it leaves you off the road and losing income even though you have a car sitting outside. A replacement needs to be a licensed private hire vehicle suitable for the work you do. Loss of earnings while you were without a suitable vehicle can also form part of the claim against the at-fault insurer, supported by your booking records and earnings statements.
What if I was injured as well as my car being damaged?
Tell someone, and get it looked at. Nearside impacts from an undertaking vehicle often produce a sideways loading through the neck and shoulder that people dismiss on the day and feel properly forty-eight hours later. See a GP, an urgent treatment centre or a physiotherapist and make sure the visit is recorded, because contemporaneous medical notes are worth far more than a recollection given months later. Keep receipts for prescriptions, treatment and travel. If you could not work, keep the evidence of that too, whether that is payslips, invoices, operator statements or booking platform records showing the gap.
CityGrip does not handle personal injury in-house. If you want to pursue an injury claim, the enquiry is referred to authorised legal partners, and that referral is only made with your separate written consent. You are never signed up to anything by default and you are free to instruct anyone you choose. It is worth knowing how the system is structured before you decide. Low value road traffic injury claims are routed through the Official Injury Claim service, introduced under the Civil Liability Act 2018 and the Whiplash Injury Regulations 2021, following the increase in the small claims track limit for road traffic injuries to £5,000.
Watch the clock, because the injury and vehicle sides run on different timetables. Section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980 gives three years for a personal injury action, running from the date the cause of action accrued or the claimant's date of knowledge if that is later. Section 2 gives six years for other claims founded in tort, which is the window for vehicle damage and related financial losses. Three years sounds like plenty until you have spent eighteen months arguing about lane position, so treat the injury decision as something to make early rather than something to leave until the vehicle claim is finished.
12DETAILKey takeaway
What should I say when the other insurer calls me?
Expect the call, often within a day or two, and often before you have collected any evidence. The person on the phone will be pleasant and will want a quick recorded account. What they are looking for in an undertaking case is very specific: any suggestion that you were changing lanes, any admission that you did not check your mirrors, any uncertainty about which lane you were in, and any phrase like sorry or I did not see them. None of those things are fatal on their own, but they are recorded, quoted back and used to justify a liability split later.
You are entitled to decline a recorded statement and to say you will confirm your account in writing once you have your footage and photographs. Give the basic factual details of the incident, the date, time, location and vehicles involved, and leave it there. Do not guess at speeds, distances or timings if you are not sure, because an estimate that turns out to conflict with dashcam data hands the other side an argument about your reliability as a witness. If you have already given a statement you now regret, say so early, because a correction supported by footage carries far more weight than an unexplained change of story later.
The stronger approach is to let the evidence speak first. Once the dashcam files, the scene photographs, the damage mapping and any independent footage are collated, the account you give matches the physical evidence and there is very little left to argue about. That is the sequence a good accident management provider runs: secure the vehicle, secure the evidence, get the engineer's report, then put the claim to the at-fault insurer as a complete package. It removes the pressure from you at the point when you are still shaken, and it puts the burden back where it belongs.
What if the undertaking driver was in a bus lane or on a hard shoulder?
This changes the picture noticeably, because it moves the other driver from breaching advisory guidance to breaching a rule expressed as a legal requirement. Rule 269 states that drivers MUST NOT use a hard shoulder except in an emergency or where directed to do so by police, traffic officers or a traffic sign, and on a smart motorway the hard shoulder may only be used as a running lane when the overhead signs permit it. Rule 258 states that drivers MUST NOT drive in a lane closed by red flashing signals and a red X. Neither leaves much room for the argument that the manoeuvre was a normal, reasonable one.
Bus lanes sit slightly differently but still help you. Rule 141 says you should not drive in a bus lane during its period of operation unless the signs indicate otherwise, and separately, driving in a bus lane during operating hours is generally enforceable by the local authority. If the vehicle that hit you was cutting up the nearside using a bus lane, photograph the bus lane markings, the operating hours plate and the time on your phone alongside it. In London and other cities these lanes are heavily camera-monitored, which is a second potential source of independent footage of the manoeuvre.
The same logic applies to slip roads and lane-gain filters, which is where a lot of undertaking collisions actually happen. A driver who enters a slip road or an added nearside lane, accelerates past a queue, and then cuts back in ahead of you is not passing on the left within any exception. They have moved into a lane on their left to overtake, which is precisely what Rule 268 prohibits, and they have then changed lanes across your path, which engages Rule 133. Capture the road layout in your photographs, because the geometry of the junction often makes the manoeuvre obvious to anyone reading the file later.
Take action
If you have just been in a non-fault collision, the fastest way to protect your claim is to open the file with us inside the first hour. We dispatch recovery, lodge the relevant CCTV requests inside the retention window, and notify the third-party insurer for you.
We do not provide legal advice. This article is general guidance for UK drivers. Personal injury enquiries are referred only with your consent to authorised legal or regulated partners. Specific limits, retention windows and process steps may change; the position at the date of any individual collision will govern the handling of that claim.
Frequently asked questions
- Is undertaking illegal in the UK?
- There is no specific offence of undertaking in UK road traffic law. The Highway Code discourages it: Rule 267 says overtake only on the right on motorways, Rule 268 says do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake, and Rule 163 permits passing on the left only where the vehicle ahead is signalling right with room to pass, or where the queue to your right is moving more slowly than you are. Section 38(7) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 means breaching those rules is not itself a criminal offence, but a driver who undertakes outside those situations may be prosecuted for careless driving under section 3.
- If someone undertakes me and hits my car, is it automatically their fault?
- No, though in most cases they start with the harder argument. Liability is decided on negligence, and passing on the left outside the permitted circumstances is strong evidence of falling below the standard of a careful driver. But the other insurer will usually claim either that an exception applied (queuing traffic, or you were signalling right) or that you moved left into them. Under section 1(1) of the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945, damages can be reduced according to each party's share of responsibility, so split liability findings are common. Dashcam footage, damage mapping and scene photographs are what decide it.
- Do I have to report an undertaking collision to the police?
- You must stop, and under section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 you must give your name and address, the owner's name and address and the vehicle registration to anyone with reasonable grounds for asking. If those details were not exchanged at the scene, for example because the other driver left, you must report the accident at a police station or to a constable as soon as reasonably practicable and within twenty-four hours. Reporting is also important if you may need to claim through the Motor Insurers' Bureau, because notifying the police is a requirement of the MIB agreements.
- What if the other insurer offers a 50/50 split?
- Do not accept it before the evidence has been assessed. Insurers often propose a split early to close a file cheaply, particularly where lane position is arguable. A 50/50 finding means you recover only half your losses, including repair costs, replacement vehicle charges and loss of earnings, and it is usually recorded as a fault claim against you, which affects your no claims discount and future premiums. Ask what evidence they are relying on. Damage contact points, impact angles, paint transfer direction and dashcam footage frequently show clearly which vehicle moved sideways, and a proposed split often does not survive that analysis.
- Can I get a replacement vehicle if I am a private hire or PCO driver?
- Yes, in principle, and a standard courtesy car is not adequate for you. A vehicle used for private hire work has to be appropriately licensed and insured for that use, so the replacement needs to be a licensed private hire vehicle suitable for the work you do, otherwise you are still off the road and losing income. CityGrip arranges like-for-like car and van replacements including licensed private hire vehicles, with the charges pursued from the at-fault driver's insurer rather than from you. This is always subject to liability and to eligibility checks, and you should return the vehicle promptly once your own is repaired.
- How long do I have to make a claim after being undertaken?
- Section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980 gives six years from the date the cause of action accrued for claims founded in tort, which covers vehicle damage, replacement vehicle costs and related financial losses. Section 11 gives three years for personal injury, running from the date the cause of action accrued or the claimant's date of knowledge if that is later. Those are the outer limits, not targets. Dashcam files get overwritten, CCTV retention periods are often measured in days or weeks, and witness recollection fades, so start collecting evidence immediately rather than relying on the limitation period.
- What happens if the driver who undertook me drove off and was never identified?
- You would be looking at the Motor Insurers' Bureau Untraced Drivers' Agreement 2017, which applies to accidents from 1 March 2017. Be aware that vehicle damage is treated restrictively under that agreement: compensation for property damage caused by an unidentified vehicle is only payable where the claimant has also been awarded a sum for significant personal injury, and it is subject to a £400 excess. That is why identifying the vehicle matters so much. Report to the police straight away, get an incident reference, and chase nearby CCTV, bus cameras and other motorists' dashcams within days, before retention periods expire.
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