Two cars collide on a wet evening. Nobody is seriously hurt. A recovery vehicle arrives, takes the car away and the driver goes home with a friend.
Eleven days later she discovers the car is in a storage yard accumulating a daily charge, her insurer has not been told where it is, and the personal items in the boot are somewhere she cannot access.
Step 1: safety before anything else
Out of the vehicle where it is unsafe to remain, behind a barrier on a fast road, hazards on. Nothing else matters until that is done.
Step 2: keep the instructions simple
Somebody who has just had a collision cannot absorb a list. Three things at a time, repeated, in plain words.
Step 3: exchange the details that matter
Names, registrations, insurers and policy numbers. This is a legal requirement in most places and it is frequently done incompletely.
Step 4: record the scene
Photographs of both vehicles, the positions, the road, any signage and the conditions. Two minutes now replaces months of dispute later.
Step 5: get witness details
Anybody who stopped, with a contact number. Witnesses disappear within minutes and are frequently decisive.
Step 6: decide the destination before the vehicle moves
A garage, home, or a storage yard. This is the decision that determines whether charges accumulate, and it is made by default when nobody decides.
Step 7: explain storage charges plainly
That they begin immediately, accrue daily and must be settled before release. Drivers do not know this and the sums become substantial quickly.
Step 8: tell the driver to inform their insurer immediately
Before anything else is arranged. An insurer told early can direct the vehicle and control the cost, and one told late cannot.
Step 9: remove personal items at the scene
Documents, keys, medication, child seats and anything valuable. Retrieving them from a yard later is difficult and sometimes chargeable.
Step 10: explain the release process
What is needed to get a vehicle back, who can authorise it and what must be paid. Drivers discover this under pressure a fortnight later.
Step 10b: say what happens to a vehicle that cannot be moved safely
Cars leaking fuel, hybrids with damaged battery packs and vehicles in unstable positions need specialist handling and sometimes the emergency services. Explaining that a delay is about doing it safely, rather than about availability, changes how a shaken driver experiences the wait.
Step 11: handle the credit hire conversation carefully
Replacement vehicle arrangements carry obligations, and somebody shaken at a roadside is not in a position to evaluate them.
Step 12: keep the location capture disciplined
Everything depends on establishing where the vehicle and driver are, which is the ground covered in where is my car questions after a breakdown.
Step 13: handle restricted roads differently
Motorway incidents have their own procedures and authorities involved, as covered in motorway and restricted road recovery questions.
Step 14: remember that injuries appear later
Drivers who felt fine at the scene frequently do not a few days later, which is the pattern described in treatment after a car accident and what to expect.
Step 15: handle the contact with care
People are shaken, sometimes distressed and occasionally in shock, which requires the approach in how to handle sensitive questions in your chatbot. An assistant that gives the safety instruction, captures the location, confirms the destination, warns about storage charges and reminds somebody to take their belongings does the genuinely useful work in that first hour. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under automotive.