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Hello all,

Looking for some advice about an incident I was involved with yesterday, any help appreciated.

On my way to return a hire car, I drove up a local high street. At a narrow section, I encountered a car coming the other way and moved over tight to the side of the road as the other driver squeezed past. When I started moving again, I severely scratched the rear offside door of the car on a bollard which was on the corner of the road.

I didn’t stop, panicked a bit, drove a couple more streets further on my journey, stopped, looked at the damage got back in and completed the journey to the car hire place.

Once there I told them about the run-in with the bollard and they charged me the full £1000 excess. I was of course very annoyed with myself and not a little embarrassed.

I had a very sleepless night last night worrying about the incident, particularly as it wasn’t totally clear in my mind whether the incident had actually played out as I thought, or whether this was wishful thinking and I had actually hit a parked car.

I returned to the location this morning and there is no sign of damage on the bollard, but also no sign of damage to a vehicle. However, looking at the road layout in the cold light of day I don’t see how I would have hit the bollard so must assume a non-zero probability that I have hit and damaged someone’s parked car and then left the scene. And if this was the reality then in addition to it being s***ty to damage someone else’s car, there may be cctv, witnesses and so on.

Given this and in an effort to take responsibility, I made a police report online this morning (within 24 hours) explaining the above and that I cannot be certain that I didn’t damage a parked car.

I have also phoned the hire car company accident line, who said they didn’t have any reports against the VRN and it would be best if I spoke to the hiring branch. Spoke to the branch, asked if I could/needed to update my damage report and they said that as I had already paid the full excess, they would just deal with it if an insurance company got in touch with them.

It’s been a torrid day or so to be honest and I am bricking it about the consequences I might face if I did hit a car, particularly as that would mean I failed to stop (though actually I now understand I should have stopped anyway for the bollard).

With the understanding that every situation is different, (and working on the assumption I hit a car) I would appreciate any advice/insight people have about the following:

1 - how likely is it that following up with a police report will mitigate leaving the scene?
2 - if another party never comes forward, how likely are the police to try and prosecute me for driving without due care? Appreciating that sc***ing anything in a car isn’t exactly showing due care- but I wasn’t speeding, on the phone, under the influence- it was a bad manoeuvre under pressure, with some tiredness mixed in
3 - if the other party does come forward - does that change how likely the police are to try to charge me?
4 - How long might I expect to wait to hear from the police in response to my initial report or will they just wait until someone does come forwards?
5 - and if I don’t hear anything, I have to keep worrying for a year, right?
6- are the police likely to actually turn up at my door and arrest me? I really don’t want my kids to see that
7- should I do more with the hire company to get their view on record? Insist that they take my RTC report reference number at least?

Thanks for reading if you have made it this far. If anything it has been an opportunity to get my thoughts into more order. As I say, any advice appreciated.
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