On-road vehicle accidents at an Amazon DSP: what to do, what to report and what Amazon requires

A driver calling from the side of the road is one of the hardest moments in DSP operations. The accident has already happened; what you do in the next twenty minutes determines the insurance outcome, the Amazon relationship, and whether you have documentation if the incident is disputed later. Having a step-by-step procedure your drivers and OSM already know is the only thing that makes a bad situation manageable.

Immediate on-road actions

The first priority is driver welfare, not paperwork. Before anything else, your driver should:

• Check for injuries — themselves and anyone else involved in the incident.
• Move vehicles out of live traffic if it is safe to do so, or switch on hazard lights and stay put.
• Call 999 if anyone is injured, if there is a significant road blockage, or if the other party is behaving aggressively.

Under the Road Traffic Act 1988, drivers are legally required to stop at the scene when an accident involves personal injury, damage to another vehicle or property, or an injury to an animal. They must give their name, address and vehicle registration to anyone with reasonable grounds to ask. If a third party is injured and the driver cannot provide insurance details at the scene, the incident must be reported to the police within 24 hours.

Once the driver is safe, they should photograph the scene, exchange details with the third party (name, address, insurer, registration plate), and note the names and contact details of any witnesses before leaving.

Notifying Amazon and your OSM

Amazon expects DSP owners to report on-road incidents to their Operations Manager promptly. Contact your OSM as soon as your driver has called you in — the same way you would handle a driver who has gone silent mid-route. Do not wait until end of day or until the incident report is complete. A notification sent early with incomplete details is almost always handled better than one sent at the end of a shift.

Keep a brief written record of when you notified your OSM, what you told them, and what response you received. If a claim or dispute surfaces weeks later, that record is evidence that you followed the correct reporting chain.

Taking the vehicle out of service

A vehicle involved in a collision should not return to route until it has been inspected. If the vehicle appears undamaged and the driver is confident it is roadworthy, they may continue — but document that decision in writing, with the time and who made it. If there is any doubt at all, recover the vehicle and redistribute the remaining stops.

An underinspected vehicle that breaks down mid-route later that day, or that fails a subsequent MOT with damage linked to an accident you sent it back out on, is a far bigger problem than a short wave or a missed block.

Notifying your insurer

Hire-and-reward fleet policies typically require prompt notification of any incident, whether or not a claim follows. "Prompt" is usually defined in the policy as within 24 to 48 hours, but the exact wording governs — not convention. Delaying notification, even for an incident where you are clearly not at fault, can give the insurer grounds to reduce a settlement or decline the claim entirely.

Make insurer notification a same-day task for your OSM, logged in writing, for every incident — regardless of how minor it appears at the time.

Internal investigation: gathering the evidence

Once the immediate response is handled, pull together the evidence before memories fade:

• Mentor telematics data and GPS trace around the incident time.
• Any dashcam footage if your fleet carries cameras.
• Your driver's photographs from the scene.
• A written accident report from the driver — your own template, completed the same day.

Document this consistently, even for minor bumps. A third party who raises a personal injury claim several months later should find a file with the same depth of evidence whether the incident was a clipped mirror or a more serious shunt.

Fit-for-work after a collision

A driver who has been in a collision — even one that appears minor — may be shaken. You are not required to make a medical assessment, but you should speak with them before they go back on the road, and note the conversation. If a driver says they are not comfortable returning that day, that is a reasonable response and should not be treated as absence.

If the driver has visible injuries, reports pain, or was involved in a serious incident, they should not go back out and should be directed to seek medical advice. Document what was said and when.

Building the procedure before it is needed

The drivers who handle these situations well are the ones who already knew what to do before they picked up the phone. A one-page procedure card — what to do on-road, who to call and when, what details to collect — gives every driver the same starting point regardless of whether it is their first week or their third year.

Review it in your pre-wave briefings after any incident in the fleet, not as a criticism, but as a reminder that the process is there for everyone.

Where the records live

DSPOps supports the compliance side of accident response: the van inspection app captures a timestamped photo record of every vehicle check before dispatch, so there is a clear before state if a vehicle comes back with new damage, and the compliance tracker keeps MOT, insurance and driver document expiry dates in one place with automatic reminders. When an insurer or Amazon asks for records, they are already logged and retrievable — you are not rebuilding a paper trail under pressure.