You clip the wing mirror of a parked car in a car park and drive off because you are running late. What has happened legally?

Why A is correct

Leaving the scene is a separate wrong from whatever caused the contact, so the smallness of the damage does not make the departure lawful. The duty is to stop, make reasonable efforts to locate the owner, exchange or leave your details, and report where that is required — whether or not anybody saw it and whether or not you intended the contact. In practice the driver who stops and leaves a note reduces the whole thing to an insurance matter. The driver who leaves converts the same dent into an offence carrying licence consequences, and the odds of being traced afterwards are considerably higher than most people assume.

Why the other options are wrong

B. Nothing, because no officer attended at the time

The absence of an officer is irrelevant. Whether one happens to be present has never been the test for whether you stay, and leaving is not made lawful merely because nobody watched it happen. Businesses and households now carry cameras almost everywhere, which makes anonymity a poor thing to assume.

C. Nothing, since the damage was trivial and nobody was hurt

Minor damage changes how much is owed, not whether the driver must stop. Nor does driving away later become defensible because the owner never appeared: the rule expects reasonable efforts and a written note, not a witness. Leaving contact details is the only mechanism that resolves this without further consequence.

D. Nothing, provided you notify your insurer within the month

Notifying your insurer later satisfies a policy condition rather than the law. Nothing in the duty to remain depends on how promptly you call your own company.

On the road

A driver knocks the mirror off a parked car and leaves. Someone on the second floor photographed it. The repair would have cost a couple of hundred; the leaving costs rather more, and it arrives with paperwork. So does a licence consequence that follows for months. The note would have taken ninety seconds to write.

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