What to Do While You Wait for Recovery

Safety first, and it depends on the road

Motorway or dual carriageway. Everyone out of the nearside doors, behind the barrier, up the bank if there is one, and back from the car rather than level with it. Do not stand between the vehicle and live lanes.

Ordinary A road. Get the car as far off the carriageway as you can. Hazards on. If there is a verge and a gap in traffic, get out and away from the road.

Residential street or car park. Far less urgent. Stay with the car if it is comfortable and safe to do so.

The general rule is that cars are insured and people are not replaceable.

What to take out of the car

If the car is going to a garage, it may sit on a forecourt overnight or over a weekend.

Phone and charger, obviously. Keys, including any spare in the glovebox. Documents, particularly the V5C if it lives in the car. Anything valuable, including things that are not obviously valuable, like a sat nav mount that signals there is a sat nav somewhere.

Medication, glasses, and anything you will need in the next few hours. Child seats if you are continuing your journey another way, because that is the one people always forget.

Take a few photos of the car before it is loaded. Not because anything usually goes wrong, but because it takes ten seconds and settles any question later.

The details worth having ready

When the driver rings back, the call is short if you have these.

Exactly where you are. Postcode, junction number, marker post, car park level, nearest building. 'Near the roundabout' is not a location in Milton Keynes.

What the car is. Make, model, colour, and roughly what year.

What it is doing. Will not start, will not steer, overheating, warning light, accident damage, stuck.

Where it needs to go. Have the garage name and address, or your home postcode.

Whether it rolls and steers. This decides what equipment is needed.

Things worth not doing

Do not keep trying to start it repeatedly if it is clearly not going to go. On a flat battery you are making it flatter, and if there is a fuel or oil problem you can make a repairable fault expensive.

Do not accept help from someone who pulls up offering a tow, unless you know them. It is well meant more often than not, but it is also a known approach for opportunists, and a rope recovery by a stranger is how cars get damaged.

Do not walk along a motorway to find a phone unless you have no signal at all, and then walk behind the barrier, in the direction of the arrow on the marker post.

Do not leave the car unlocked with your things in it while you wait somewhere else.

If you are waiting a while

Keep warm. Engine off means no heater, and sitting still in a cold car gets unpleasant faster than people expect. A blanket in the boot costs nothing.

Preserve your phone battery. Turn the brightness down, stop refreshing things, and if you have a power bank this is what it is for.

Let somebody know where you are and roughly when you expect to be moving. Particularly at night.

If the estimate changes significantly, you should be told rather than left guessing. A driver who has been held up somewhere else should ring you.

Waiting after dark

Everything is harder at night. You are less visible, it is colder, and judging gaps in traffic is more difficult.

Hazards on, sidelights on, and if you have a hi-vis in the car this is the moment it earns its place. They cost very little and live well in a door pocket.

Stand further back from the road than you would in daylight, and do not rely on drivers seeing you. On an unlit verge you are effectively invisible until headlights are on you.

Keep your phone screen dimmed to save battery, and tell the driver on the phone that it is dark and where exactly you are standing, so they are looking for people as well as a car.

If you have passengers

Decide early whether everyone needs to wait. If there are several of you and somewhere safe and warm nearby, it often makes sense for most people to go there while one person stays with the car.

On a motorway that calculation is different, because walking anywhere is not an option. Everyone stays behind the barrier together.

If someone is unwell, elderly, or a child is getting cold, say so when you ring. It genuinely affects how a driver prioritises jobs, and most will tell you honestly if you would be better off arranging a taxi for the passengers and leaving one person with the vehicle.

Thinking about onward travel

The car is only half the problem. Once it is loaded, you still have to get where you were going.

A recovery vehicle can usually take one or two passengers in the cab, depending on the vehicle and the seatbelts available. Ask when you ring rather than assuming, particularly if there are three or four of you or you have child seats.

If the car is going to a garage and you are going home, work out in advance how. Milton Keynes has reasonable taxi coverage but the villages around it do not, particularly late at night.

And be clear about where the car is actually going. Deciding that while standing on a verge in the rain is how cars end up at a garage that cannot look at them for a fortnight.

Common questions