Report it to your insurer the same day, ideally from the roadside, even if nobody plans to claim. The law only sets a deadline for telling the police, in some cases. The deadline that matters for the claim is the one in your policy, where some fleet wordings say "immediately".
The day matters more than the deadline, because the first day is when your insurer can still reach the other driver and keep control of what the claim costs.
When the police need to know
Where an accident on a road or other public place injures someone else, or damages another vehicle, an animal or roadside property, the driver must stop. If anyone with reasonable grounds asks, the driver must give their name and address, the vehicle owner's details and the registration. If the driver doesn't give those details at the scene, they must report the accident to the police. The same applies after an injury accident where the driver doesn't produce their insurance. The report must be made "as soon as is reasonably practicable and, in any case, within twenty-four hours" (Road Traffic Act 1988, section 170).
That means not every accident has to be reported to the police, though every one your driver is involved in should reach your insurer. This is a summary of the law, not legal advice.
When your insurer needs to know
Your policy sets this, so it's worth reading the claims condition rather than relying on the 24 or 48 hours often quoted for private car insurance. Fleet wordings can be stricter. One insurer's mini fleet wording says that after an incident "you must immediately" call its claims line and "provide us with full details of any other party". It won't pay a claim where you haven't (AXA, June 2025).
The same wording applies whether or not you plan to claim, which is why it's safest to report every incident and let the insurer decide what happens next.
Why the first day decides the cost
Aviva's published examples put the same minor collision at £3,169 when it's reported within 24 hours with the other driver's details taken at the scene. Reported five days later without those details, it costs £13,800 (Aviva Risk Solutions, September 2025). Most of the extra is the other driver's hire car, which rises from £745 to £7,350, though their repair costs more too. What changes is who handles that repair and replacement vehicle and for how long.
Speed also decides how often an insurer gets that chance. Aviva's data, published by Marsh, shows a fleet that reports 47 per cent of its claims on the day can potentially reach the other driver first, what insurers call capture, on 67 per cent of claims. That's 40 per cent more than a fleet reporting 22 per cent on the day.
Why fleet reports arrive late
Most delays have nothing to do with drivers hiding anything. The accident happens on a job miles from the depot, the form gets filled in at the end of the shift and nobody in the office reads it until the next working day. A bump on a Friday afternoon, written up at six and read on Monday, has lost the whole weekend before your insurer hears about it. It may have run up a hire car for all of it as well.
Where SHIELD fits
SHIELD lets your driver report the incident at the roadside in the SHIELD app, with photos, the other driver's details, the location and a signature. The office gets an alert, checks the report and adds notes, with a licence check attached: one from the last 30 days if there is one, or a new one run there and then. It then goes to your insurer, broker or repair network within minutes. In one example from SHIELD's demo system, an incident at 10.55 reached the office at 11.00 and the insurer at 11.10.
Since Orkin started using SHIELD, the time from an incident to its insurer having everything it needs to start on the claim has dropped from around 11 days to 2.5. That's more than four times faster.
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Sources: Road Traffic Act 1988, section 170 (legislation.gov.uk); AXA Commercial Motor mini fleet policy wording, June 2025; Aviva Risk Solutions, "Commercial motor collision? Why prompt reporting still matters", September 2025; Marsh, "Benefits of Reporting Motor Claims Quickly", October 2025, using Aviva data.