A mate of mine had a shunt on the A45 near Coventry, three years ago. A car pulled out of a side road without looking, he braked hard, the car clipped his nearside. Minor injuries, no fatalities, one car written off. He did everything right at the scene — stopped, called it in, exchanged details, stayed until the police arrived.
Three weeks later, his transport manager got a call from DVSA asking to inspect the vehicle's tachograph records going back 28 days. Not because my mate had done anything wrong on the tachograph. Because in a serious accident involving an HGV, the tachograph data gets looked at. That's standard. He'd downloaded the card within a couple of days of the incident because someone sensible had told him to. The records were fine. But if he hadn't downloaded it promptly, the card data would have been overwritten before anyone asked for it.
That's the part most drivers don't think about on the day. There's the immediate scene, the injury check, the police, the shattered wing mirror or the dented trailer side. Then there's the paperwork that comes three weeks later. The two are connected, and the decisions you make on the day affect whether the paperwork three weeks later is straightforward or a problem.
What you must do at the scene
The Road Traffic Act 1988, Section 170 sets out the immediate obligations. If you're involved in an accident that causes injury to any person, damage to another vehicle or property, or injury to certain animals (horse, cattle, ass, mule, sheep, pig, goat or dog — not cats, frustratingly, despite the statute being updated for everything else), you must:
Stop. You must stop the vehicle. Not just slow down. Stop. Failure to stop is a separate criminal offence.
Give your details. Name and address, and the vehicle registration number. You also have to produce your insurance certificate on request — either at the scene to anyone with reasonable grounds to want it, or later. If you can't produce it at the scene, you have seven days.
Report to the police if necessary. If you couldn't exchange details at the scene — if the other party left, if there was no other party present (a collision with a wall, a fixed object), or if there was personal injury — you must report the accident to a police station "as soon as reasonably practicable," and in any case within 24 hours.
In practice, if emergency services attended, the police are already there and the 24-hour requirement is met. But if it was a minor incident — scraped a gatepost, clipped a parked car, minor bump on a private road — and no police attended, that 24-hour window applies to you personally, regardless of what the yard or the dispatcher thinks about it.
The 24-hour reporting window
Section 170(3) is clear: report to the police "as soon as reasonably practicable, and in any case within 24 hours." The "as soon as reasonably practicable" language means you don't wait. You don't wait until morning, you don't wait until you've told the TM, you don't wait until the agency sorts out which depot to call.
Some drivers assume that if the other party has all their details, reporting is optional. It isn't — where there's been personal injury or damage that couldn't be resolved at the scene, the legal obligation is on you. The other party having your details doesn't discharge your Section 170 duty.
This matters for HGV drivers more than car drivers for a specific reason. An incident involving an HGV is more likely to result in injury or significant property damage than the same incident involving a car. That increases the likelihood of a Section 170 obligation applying. It also increases the likelihood of DVSA interest in the aftermath.
The tachograph card: what to do and when
Your driver card holds about 28 days of activity. After a serious accident, that data is evidence. It shows your driving and rest patterns in the days before the incident — which can either confirm you were compliant or highlight issues that become relevant in an insurance claim or prosecution.
The practical advice is simple: don't leave the card in the vehicle after a serious accident. Download it promptly — ideally the same day, certainly within 48 hours. Keep a copy of the downloaded data somewhere separate from the vehicle's records. If the vehicle goes off to a bodyshop or an inspection facility, the vehicle unit data is safe in the VU for 90+ days. But the card comes out with you.
If your transport manager downloads the card in the normal course of business in the days after an incident, that's fine — but make sure they're keeping the data somewhere you can access it if needed. Your UK GDPR right to a copy of your personal data (Article 15 of UK GDPR) means you're entitled to a copy of what's on your card. In the post-accident period, exercise that right if you have any concern about how the data is being used. I covered this in the post on tachograph data and UK GDPR.
For the vehicle unit: the VU data is retained for a longer period and is the operator's record to download and keep. If DVSA or solicitors request the VU data, the operator handles that. But if there's any question about whether the vehicle was operating correctly in the days before the accident — brakes, tachograph calibration, speed data — the VU is where that evidence lives.
The Traffic Commissioner notification
This is the one most operators miss. The TC notification requirement isn't in EU 561 — it comes from the Operator Licensing undertakings. When an operator applies for a Goods Vehicle Operator Licence, they sign up to a set of undertakings, one of which is to promptly report events that could affect their licence or repute.
A serious accident involving one of their vehicles is exactly the kind of event the Traffic Commissioner wants to know about. Not because every accident is an operator failure — most aren't. But the TC has an ongoing interest in whether the operator is running a compliant, safe fleet. An accident that causes serious injury, involves a fatality, or raises questions about vehicle maintenance or driver hours is the kind of thing that appears at a public inquiry later if it wasn't reported at the time.
There's no fixed statutory timeframe for TC notification in the same way there's a 24-hour window for police reporting. But "promptly" means within days, not weeks. The general guidance from Traffic Commissioners is to report significant incidents — anything involving police attendance, serious injury, or DVSA follow-up — without waiting to see how things develop.
Some operators don't tell the TC because they're worried about the consequences. That calculation usually works out wrong. A prompt, honest notification — here's what happened, here's what we've done about it — is much better received than a belated disclosure after DVSA have already filed their own report.
Insurance disclosure and cooperation
Your employer's insurers will want to be notified promptly. The policy almost certainly includes a condition requiring notification of incidents "as soon as practicable." Delay in notification can affect the policy's response — not usually the cover itself, but the insurer's ability to investigate and manage the claim.
From the driver's perspective: don't make statements to anyone other than the police before you've spoken to your employer and, if there's any question of liability, to the employer's legal team. This isn't about being uncooperative — it's about not inadvertently creating problems in your account before you've had time to think clearly. In the immediate aftermath of an accident, your memory and your account of events are evidence. Treat them accordingly.
The tachograph data will be disclosed in any litigation or serious investigation. If the data shows compliant driving — proper rest periods, legal speeds, no hours infringements — that's straightforwardly useful to you. If there are issues in the records, better to know about them before they surface in a solicitor's letter three months later.
Summary of the immediate obligations
Stop. Exchange details. Report to the police within 24 hours where required. Download your driver card promptly — same day if serious, within 48 hours regardless. Notify your transport manager immediately. They notify the TC and the insurers. Don't make statements to third parties before speaking to your employer.
The scene and the paperwork are both your problem. You can manage both if you know what's required. The common failures — not reporting to the police within 24 hours, not preserving the tacho card, not telling the TC until forced to — are all avoidable. They just require knowing the rules before you need them.
If you're tracking your hours and compliance records in case they're ever needed as evidence, ShiftOwt keeps your EU 561 and WTD records automatically — £5.99 a month for drivers, so you always have your compliance history available when it matters.
The first phone call after an accident
Once the scene is safe and emergency services are called if needed, the next call should be to your transport manager — not the agency, not your mate, not your insurer directly. Your TM or operator. They need to know immediately because they're the ones who carry the operator licence obligations and the insurance notification duty.
If it's the middle of the night and nobody's answering, leave a message and call the emergency number if there is one. The important thing is that you've made the attempt to notify promptly. Don't wait until the morning shift.
What you tell the TM: where you are, what happened, whether there are injuries, whether the vehicle is driveble, whether police attended. That's enough for the first call. The full account comes later. Don't try to give a complete detailed version at the roadside — you're usually in no state to be accurate, and anything you say at the scene can be used later. Stick to the facts of location, incident type, injury status, and vehicle status.
The TM needs to call the insurer, potentially notify the TC, and arrange recovery if the vehicle is off the road. That's their job. Your job at the scene is safety, details exchange, police reporting if required, and preserving the card data.
Body camera and dashcam footage
A lot of HGV operators now fit dash cameras, both forward-facing and inward cab. I covered the GDPR implications of that in this post on dashcams and CCTV. After an accident, the footage from a dashcam is potentially useful evidence — but it's the operator's property, not yours, unless you own the vehicle.
Don't try to access or copy the dashcam footage yourself unless the operator gives you explicit permission to do so. The footage may be the subject of a legal hold once litigation starts, and interfering with it — even unintentionally by overwriting it with new footage — could create problems. Ask the TM to ensure the footage is preserved as soon as you notify them.
If the other vehicle had a dashcam and they're willing to share the footage voluntarily, that's useful evidence of the other party's conduct. But you can't compel them to share it at the scene, and asking too aggressively might create a bad impression if the interaction is later reviewed.
Your own documentation at the scene — photos of vehicle positions, road markings, damage, any road defects or signage that might be relevant — is entirely appropriate and can be valuable. Take them before anything is moved if it's safe to do so. Photos of tyre marks, debris positions, and road surface conditions are the kind of evidence that becomes unavailable once the scene is cleared.