Monday morning: the delivery van has a palm-sized dent in its right rear door. On Friday three drivers drove it, at the weekend it stood at the depot, and nobody knows anything about it. This scene comes back in every fleet with several drivers, and the outcome is usually the same: the loss stays with the company because there is no one it can be proven against, and the casco claim notification starts with the words “at an unknown time, at an unknown place”. As a broker, what I see is that this type of loss is not solved by insurance but by a two-minute handover routine – and that this routine is useful not only in employment-law terms but also for claims settlement and claims statistics. This article is about what the report should record, how the driver should take photos and what should happen if an unexplained dent turns up nonetheless.
- Without a report there is no evidence: under Section 179 of the Hungarian Labour Code (Mt.), the employer must prove the damage, the breach of duty and the causal link – “somebody this week” proves nothing, so the loss stays with the company.
- The handover routine (report, eight photos, accessories checklist) serves three purposes at once: clarifying liability, making the casco claim notification timely and complete with its circumstances, and keeping the claims statistics clean.
- According to Arval's 2025 fleet statistics, more than 60 per cent of losses arise from routine situations – stone chips, parking, reversing; these silent losses are the ones the at-the-scene accident routine does not address.
Why does hidden damage stay with the company?
According to the figures, most fleet losses are not accidents. Arval Hungary's 2025 statistics, based on more than 4,700 loss events, show that more than 60 per cent of losses are linked to routine situations rather than road accidents: stone chips account for 37.3 per cent, parking damage for 23.1 per cent and damage while reversing for 3.7 per cent, and nearly half of the vehicles need damage repairs at least once a year. These are exactly the losses that nobody reports at the scene – there is no other party, no joint accident report form, just a scratch that appeared “sometime this week”.
That is why the employment-law side is difficult not for the driver but for the company. Under Section 179 of the Hungarian Labour Code (Mt.), an employee is liable if they breached an obligation arising from the employment relationship and did not act as would generally be expected in the given situation – but it is the employer that must prove the damage, the breach of duty and the causal link between the two, and in the case of slight negligence compensation is capped at four months' absence pay (távolléti díj), or eight months' under a collective agreement; the full loss can only be claimed for intentional or grossly negligent damage. If it is not known which of three drivers hit the concrete post while parking, there is no evidence and no claim. What the company can claim at all, and why the deductible cannot simply be deducted from wages, is explained in my article on the deductible and employee liability.
The claims side is no simpler. Casco typically covers parking damage as collision damage, but subject to the deductible and at the expense of the loss ratio; the conditions also require the loss to be notified within a set deadline, stating the time, place and circumstances of the event – the deadline varies by insurer. Under Section 6:453 of the Hungarian Civil Code (Ptk.), late notification only has legal consequences if, as a result, a material circumstance can no longer be established – with parking damage, however, the time and place may be exactly such material circumstances, and a “we don't know when” notification raises questions at the insurer. Whether a small loss is worth reporting at all is a separate decision – I have written about the small-claims dilemma – but to make that decision you need to know when and how the damage occurred.
The report: what should it record to stand up as evidence?
The handover report is not bureaucracy but a timestamp: it records the condition in which the driver took over the car and the condition in which they returned it. Damage falling between the two timestamps is theirs – this is the only way to make the burden of proof bearable for the company. The minimum content of the report: date and time, registration number, the names and signatures of the person handing over and the person taking over, odometer reading, fuel level or state of charge, and a body diagram marking the location, size and nature (scratch, dent, crack) of existing damage. Then comes the accessories checklist: spare wheel or tyre repair kit, jack, warning triangle, high-visibility vest, first-aid kit, the charging cable for an electric vehicle, and the documents and cards – registration certificate, green card, accident report form, fuel card. It is also worth giving the windscreen, the tyres and the dashboard warning lights a box each.
Accessories carry particular weight in employment law. Under the Labour Code's rule on liability for items in safekeeping (Section 180), an employee is liable for a shortage in an item taken over on the basis of an inventory or receipt, with an obligation to return it, if they keep it permanently in their custody or use or manage it exclusively, and they are released from liability only if they prove that the shortage was caused by an unavoidable cause – for damage to the item, however, the general liability under Section 179 remains. A signed accessories checklist is therefore worth much more for a missing charging cable or fuel card than for a dent; for the dent, the two timestamps are the weapon. Financiers' return guides – for example Merkantil's fleet vehicle return guide – describe point by point what they check at the end of the lease; it is worth building the internal report on the same points, because at the end of the term the company pays for exactly these.
The photo routine: eight pictures, two minutes
A paper report without photos can be disputed, and photos without the report are hard to interpret – they work together. The routine has to be simple, otherwise people will not stick to it: one picture from each of the four corners, each showing the registration plate and two sides of the vehicle, one picture per side of the wheels and rims, the dashboard with the odometer and fuel level, and finally the interior – those are the eight pictures. If the driver sees known damage, a close-up is needed as well, with a reference object next to it – a key, a bank card – so that the size can be judged later. The phone's timestamp only proves something if the pictures are moved from the device to a shared company storage location the same day: the handover module of the fleet software, or a shared folder named with the registration number and the date; a private chat group is not suitable for this, because the pictures disappear when the driver leaves. The driver's face does not need to be in the pictures – the vehicle is the subject, and data handling is simpler that way too.
The routine works if it runs in both directions: the driver handing back the vehicle takes photos at drop-off, the driver taking it over before setting off, and if they see a discrepancy, they report it before setting off. At a key handover point on site, this can also be in the dispatcher's hands; at a night shift change, lighting is the key, because a dent does not show in a picture taken in a dark car park. Where telematics is installed, the odometer reading and movement data can be lined up with the photos, which also answers the question “who drove it on Friday?” – what fleet tracking can and cannot do is covered in my article on telematics.
If an unexplained dent turns up nonetheless
The first step is to narrow it down using the reports: the driver between the last damage-free takeover and the first return with damage is the one concerned. If the routine had gaps and the damage cannot be linked to anyone, the company decides: a casco claim with the deductible and a burden on the loss ratio, or settling it from its own budget – if the company opts to report it, the primary route for the notification is in any case the insurer's claims line or portal. If the responsible driver can be identified, any claim moves within the framework of the Labour Code: there is no automatic deduction from wages (Mt. Section 161); an agreement is the route, with the four-month cap for slight negligence and the full loss for intentional or grossly negligent damage. The driver policy should state that the driver reports any damage – even the smallest – on the same day, and that unreported damage discovered later will be assessed separately; in the article on the driver policy I described where this damage routine fits, and the steps to take at the scene of an accident are set out in the at-the-scene checklist. It is also worth thinking about the claims statistics: unexplained losses that pile up by the renewal date worsen the picture in the insurer's eyes, whereas for losses that can be linked to drivers, at least targeted prevention can be built.
What should the fleet manager do? Prepare a one-page report template with the boxes above, make the eight photos mandatory at every handover, designate a company storage location and a retention period, and write the same-day reporting obligation into the driver policy. As a broker, I can help by explaining the notification deadline and evidence requirements of the casco conditions as they apply to your fleet – if you get in touch, I help where I can. The insurer pays only for what is an insured event under your contract and has been reported in time, together with its circumstances; the rest depends on the company's reports.
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Sources
- Mt. – Act I of 2012 (Hungarian Labour Code), Section 161 (deductions from wages), Section 179 (the employee's liability for damages), Section 180 (liability for items in safekeeping)
- Ptk. – Act V of 2013 (Hungarian Civil Code), Section 6:453 (notification of the insured event, consequences of delay)
- Economx, 10 February 2026: “Tévhit, hogy balesetből eredne a legtöbb autókár: erre fizetnek rá a cégek” (It is a myth that most car damage comes from accidents: this is what companies end up paying for) – Arval Hungary's 2025 claims statistics
- Merkantil Bank – Fleet vehicle return guide (passenger cars)
