MIB untraced driver claim: hit-and-run under the 2017 Agreement

The Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017: scheme overview

The Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017 is the contractual scheme between the Motor Insurers’ Bureau and the Secretary of State for Transport that obliges the MIB to compensate victims of road traffic accidents where the at-fault driver cannot be identified. It applies to accidents on or after 1 March 2017 and replaces the 2003 Untraced Drivers Agreement (and its earlier predecessors going back to the 1960s). The Agreement is conceptually a guarantor of last resort, mirroring the function the Uninsured Drivers Agreement performs for known-but-uninsured drivers.

The scope of the Agreement is the UK. The accident must have occurred on a road or other public place in Great Britain or Northern Ireland; the offending vehicle must have been a motor vehicle within the meaning of the Road Traffic Act 1988; and the offending driver must be untraced after the claimant’s reasonable efforts to identify them. ‘Untraced’ is not a fixed legal definition but a practical assessment by the MIB of whether the available evidence supports identification: CCTV that shows the vehicle’s registration plate could lead to a known driver and engage the Uninsured Drivers Agreement instead; CCTV that does not capture identifiable details leaves the driver untraced.

The Agreement does not just cover classic hit-and-run accidents. It also covers: accidents where the offending vehicle was identified but the driver was not (a relative or unidentifiable third party borrowed the car, drove negligently and ran); accidents involving foreign-registered vehicles that have left the UK with no traceable insurance representative; accidents involving stolen vehicles whose thieves escape unidentified; and accidents where the offending driver fled and was never caught despite reasonable investigation.

Application deadlines: 3 years for injury, 9 months for property

Clause 4 of the Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017 imposes two application deadlines. Personal injury claims must be made within three years of the date of the accident. Property damage claims must be made within nine months of the date of the accident. These are absolute deadlines for the MIB’s receipt of the application - they are not limitation periods in the Limitation Act sense because there is no court claim, but they function identically as procedural cut-offs.

The nine-month property damage window is much shorter than the standard six-year limitation period under section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980 and catches unrepresented claimants frequently. A hit-and-run on a parked car that is discovered the next morning, and then put off for ‘when there is time to deal with it’, can drift past the nine-month window long before the claimant realises an MIB claim is on offer. The shorter window reflects the Agreement’s design: contemporaneous police reporting and prompt notification are central to the scheme’s ability to investigate effectively.

For child claimants the three-year personal injury window does not start until the eighteenth birthday under section 28 of the Limitation Act 1980, applied by reference in the Agreement’s interpretation provisions. A child hit-and-run victim therefore has until age 21 to apply for personal injury compensation. Property damage applications by or on behalf of children are subject to the nine-month window in the same way as adult applications because the property is owned by an adult guardian or the family unit.

Police report: condition precedent to MIB liability

The Agreement requires the claimant to report the collision to the police as soon as reasonably practicable and to provide the MIB with the police report reference. The reporting duty parallels the section 170 Road Traffic Act 1988 obligation: where details cannot be exchanged at the scene (because the offending driver did not stop), the surviving driver or victim must report the collision at a police station within 24 hours.

The police report is the documentary anchor of the MIB’s investigation. It records: the time and place of the collision; the survivor’s description of the offending vehicle and driver (where any details are available); any witness statements obtained by police; the immediate aftermath including any injury treatment and ambulance attendance; and the police’s investigation steps including ANPR checks, CCTV review and door-to-door enquiries. The police incident reference (the CAD number or Stats19 reference for injury accidents) is the unique identifier the MIB uses throughout.

Without a police report the MIB will not pay. Where a claimant has missed the 24-hour reporting window because of injury or hospitalisation, the late report is usually accepted by police but the longer the delay the harder the evidence becomes. In practice the police report should be made as early as possible - within hours, not days - and the report reference noted for the MIB application. Where the police have closed the investigation without identifying the offending driver, the closure letter is also part of the evidence the MIB receives.

MIB investigation: how the claim is assessed

Under the Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017 the MIB itself makes the assessment of liability and quantum. The MIB has no obligation to pay where the offending driver was not in fact at fault - the burden of establishing the untraced driver’s negligence remains on the claimant on the balance of probabilities. The MIB conducts its own investigation: review of the police file, examination of CCTV and dashcam footage, interviews with witnesses, examination of medical evidence and (where required) instruction of MIB-instructed medical and engineering experts.

The MIB has a contractual right under the Agreement to require the claimant to attend a medical examination by an MIB-instructed expert and to attend interviews about the collision. The claimant’s cooperation is a condition precedent to MIB liability. Once the investigation is complete the MIB makes a written assessment of: whether the untraced driver is liable; what heads of damage are recoverable; the value of each head; any contributory negligence deduction; and the net sum payable. The assessment is presented to the claimant as a settlement offer.

Contributory negligence applies in the same way as in any other personal injury claim: a non-belted passenger receives the Froom v Butcher [1976] QB 286 deduction; a pedestrian who stepped into the road without looking receives the standard 25-50% deduction depending on the circumstances. The MIB will apply these deductions on its own assessment without needing a court order, because there is no court process - the contractual framework operates as a substitute civil litigation procedure within the Agreement’s rules.

The arbitrator reference under clause 18

Where the claimant disagrees with the MIB’s assessment, clause 18 of the Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017 provides for a reference to an arbitrator. The arbitrator is appointed by the President of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and conducts the reference under the Agreement’s procedural rules. Most references are conducted on the papers without an oral hearing; some involve a video or in-person hearing where the issues require live evidence (typically disputed medical evidence or contested mechanism).

The arbitrator’s decision is binding on both the MIB and the claimant. There is no right of appeal on the merits. There is a narrow right of challenge under section 68 of the Arbitration Act 1996 for serious irregularity affecting the arbitrator, the proceedings or the award, but this is rarely successful and is not a route to second-guess the merits. The finality of the arbitrator’s decision reflects the contractual nature of the scheme.

The arbitrator’s costs are usually paid by the MIB irrespective of outcome, although the claimant can be ordered to pay their own legal costs where their position has been unreasonable or where they have pursued a hopeless reference. The arbitrator reference typically takes 6-12 months to complete, depending on the complexity of the issues and the arbitrator’s diary. The arbitration is the principal dispute resolution route under the Untraced Drivers Agreement and operates as a substitute for the court trial that would otherwise resolve the dispute.

Heads of damage under the Agreement

The Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017 follows the ordinary common-law heads of damage for personal injury claims, with the following structure. Personal injury: general damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity (subject to the whiplash tariff for tariff injuries from 31 May 2021 onwards under SI 2021/642, as amended by SI 2025/615 for accidents from 31 May 2025); special damages for past loss of earnings (net of tax and NIC), past treatment costs, past care and assistance (commercial rates with a 25% discount for unpaid family care), mileage to medical appointments, and damaged personal property. Future loss heads apply where the injury is ongoing.

Property damage: pre-accident market value of the claimant’s vehicle (where damage exceeds repair threshold), repair costs to PAS 125 / BS 10125 standard (where repair is economic), like-for-like replacement vehicle for the off-the-road period, recovery and storage costs, and consequential losses. Property damage is subject to a £400 excess and a £1 million cap per vehicle, just as under the Uninsured Drivers Agreement. The £400 excess is borne by the claimant.

Pure economic loss not flowing from injury or property damage is generally outside the Agreement’s scope. So is consequential loss that the claimant cannot evidence with reasonable particularity - the MIB takes a robust position on evidence and the claimant must prove each head of loss with appropriate documentation (payslips, SA302s, invoices, receipts). Vague or unsubstantiated heads are routinely struck out.

CCTV, ANPR and the investigative steps that promote a claim from untraced to identified

The boundary between an Untraced Drivers Agreement claim and an Uninsured Drivers Agreement claim is the identifiability of the offending driver. A claim that starts as untraced can be promoted to identified - and therefore moved from the Untraced Agreement’s no-defendant procedure to the Uninsured Agreement’s court-based procedure - by evidence emerging during the investigation. The most common promotion routes are CCTV that captures the offending vehicle’s registration plate (allowing DVLA lookup and ultimately a driver identification), ANPR records along the offending vehicle’s likely route, witness statements that add new identification details and social media disclosures by the offending driver themselves.

The claimant has a contractual duty under the Untraced Drivers Agreement to take reasonable steps to identify the offending driver. ‘Reasonable steps’ are: filing the police report promptly; identifying any nearby CCTV (council, shop, business premises, doorbell cameras) and asking the police to seize the footage; sharing dashcam footage from the claimant’s own vehicle and from any cooperative witnesses; placing appeals on local social media and community boards where appropriate; and following up with police on the investigation’s progress. The MIB sometimes asks for evidence that these steps have been taken before accepting the claim into the Untraced regime.

Where investigation later identifies the offending driver, the procedural change is fundamental. The Untraced application is paused or withdrawn and a new claim is opened against the now-identified driver. If they have insurance, the claim runs through their insurer in the ordinary way. If they were uninsured, the claim moves to the Uninsured Drivers Agreement 2017 with the clause 7 seven-day service rule and the joinder-as-co-defendant procedure. The transition is procedurally complex and a panel solicitor familiar with both Agreements is essential.

Foreign-registered vehicles and the post-Brexit cross-border position

Untraced Drivers Agreement claims involving foreign-registered vehicles are increasingly common. A foreign vehicle in the UK that collides with a UK road user and leaves before identification falls inside the Agreement’s scope where the vehicle cannot be traced through UK or foreign databases. The MIB’s investigation involves the relevant foreign Green Card Bureau under the Council of Bureaux system, which coordinates motor-insurance enforcement across the participating countries. Post-Brexit the UK remains a participating country and the system continues to function for accidents in either direction.

Where the foreign vehicle is identifiable but the driver is not (vehicle traced through a registration plate to a foreign owner who declines to identify the driver), the position differs. The relevant foreign insurer’s UK claims representative - appointed under the Motor Vehicles (Compulsory Insurance) (Information Centre and Compensation Body) Regulations 2003 - can be sued in the UK courts even though the underlying defendant is abroad. The MIB’s Untraced Drivers Agreement does not apply because the vehicle is traced; the claim runs through the foreign insurer’s UK representative under the ordinary tort framework.

For accidents involving UK claimants overseas, the position is reversed. The lex loci delicti - the law of the place of the accident - governs liability and limitation under retained Rome II Regulation rules. A UK resident hit by an untraced driver in France or Spain has rights under the local equivalent of the Untraced Drivers Agreement (the FGTI in France, CCS in Spain) but the procedure, deadlines and heads of damage differ from the UK framework. Specialist cross-border advice is essential on these claims.

CityGrip’s role on an untraced-driver file

CityGrip coordinates the property-damage side of an untraced-driver claim: recovery of the damaged vehicle from the scene, secure storage at recoverable rates, independent engineer’s inspection to establish repair scope or total-loss valuation, compilation of the police report and CCTV / dashcam evidence and early notification to the MIB on the property-damage side under the nine-month window. The like-for-like replacement vehicle eligibility is more complex on an untraced file than on an ordinary insurer claim because the MIB’s timing and assessment process means the credit-hire period can run longer; we triage the replacement-vehicle question case-by-case.

We do not run personal injury claims and we do not give legal advice. With your explicit consent we introduce personal injury claims to an SRA-regulated panel solicitor familiar with MIB untraced-driver procedure on disclosed referral terms. The solicitor manages the clause 4 application, the MIB’s investigation, the medical examination requirements and any clause 18 arbitrator reference. Related guides: MIB uninsured driver claim, hit and run accident support, uninsured driver accident support, parked car hit claims, accident claim time limit, injury claim referral.