Hit & run - help identifying door cam

whateverIsaywill

Hi all — hoping someone here may be able to advise.

My parked car was hit by a large grey panel van (hit and run). A neighbour’s Ring doorbell camera captured the incident clearly enough to show the type of vehicle, but unfortunately the registration plate is blurred by motion and glare from the plate light.

I’ve tried:

• Several digital forensics / video enhancement companies — most have said they can’t enhance it reliably, or quoted £400+ with no guarantee.
• Fiverr-type services — mixed results, nothing reliable.
• Manually reviewing the footage frame-by-frame — I can see partial characters but not enough to be confident.

The van appears to be a large long-wheelbase panel van (Boxer / Ducato / Relay / Movano class), grey, unmarked, with a high roof and square rear profile.

Unfortunately I don’t have access to any other CCTV in the street, and the police haven’t been able to help without a readable plate.

My questions are:

1. Has anyone had success identifying a vehicle from partial plates / vehicle type via insurance, ANPR, or other routes?
2. Is there any legitimate database, insurer process, or authority route I might be missing that could help narrow this down?
3. Has anyone successfully claimed via the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB) for an untraced driver in a similar situation — and how practical was that?
4. Are there any realistic next steps I should take before giving up on identification?

I’m not trying to accuse anyone incorrectly — just trying to work out whether there is anything sensible left to try before I move on to the uninsured driver route.

Any advice very gratefully received — thank you.

Aretnap

If you have comprehensive consider then you can't claim from the MIB. They are an insurer of last resort - they will only cover losses which are not covered by any insurance policy, including your own. 

You can make an claim through your own insurance and give them the footage. It's unlikely that they'll put more time and effort into examining it than you've already done without any guarantee of success tbh, but it does depend to an extent on the value of the damage. They'll probably be willing to spend a bit more to track down a driver who wrote off Ferrari than someone who dented the door of a 15 year old Ford Focus.

cymruchris

Unfortunately it's not like watching detective series on the tv whereby someone presses a button and everything magically appears when they're examining cctv footage. With number plates - they are incredibly hard to read at night using a traditional camera. Due to infrared bounce back and movement - usually the only way you get decent registration capture at night is with an ANPR camera that run on higher shutter speeds whereby the plate is captured, but the surrounding area dark. I think you've gone as far as you can with the footage you have, and wouldn't throw any money at trying to make it better. 

Baldytyke88

whateverIsaywill said:

My parked car was hit by a large grey panel van (hit and run). A neighbour’s Ring doorbell camera captured the incident clearly enough to show the type of vehicle, but unfortunately the registration plate is blurred by motion and glare from the plate light.

The van appears to be a large long-wheelbase panel van (Boxer / Ducato / Relay / Movano class), grey, unmarked, with a high roof and square rear profile

Well, these are brown, its the mention of a square rear which is confusing? But you can post a photo here?

noitsnotme

Baldytyke88 said:

whateverIsaywill said:

My parked car was hit by a large grey panel van (hit and run). A neighbour’s Ring doorbell camera captured the incident clearly enough to show the type of vehicle, but unfortunately the registration plate is blurred by motion and glare from the plate light.

The van appears to be a large long-wheelbase panel van (Boxer / Ducato / Relay / Movano class), grey, unmarked, with a high roof and square rear profile

Well, these are brown, its the mention of a square rear which is confusing? But you can post a photo here?

Where does brown come in to it?  The OP said the van was grey (and unmarked) so it’s probably not a UPS van.

Mildly_Miffed

whateverIsaywill said:

Hi all — hoping someone here may be able to advise.

My parked car was hit by a large grey panel van (hit and run). A neighbour’s Ring doorbell camera captured the incident clearly enough to show the type of vehicle, but unfortunately the registration plate is blurred by motion and glare from the plate light.

I’ve tried:

• Several digital forensics / video enhancement companies — most have said they can’t enhance it reliably, or quoted £400+ with no guarantee.
• Fiverr-type services — mixed results, nothing reliable.
• Manually reviewing the footage frame-by-frame — I can see partial characters but not enough to be confident.

The van appears to be a large long-wheelbase panel van (Boxer / Ducato / Relay / Movano class), grey, unmarked, with a high roof and square rear profile.

Unfortunately I don’t have access to any other CCTV in the street, and the police haven’t been able to help without a readable plate.

My questions are:

1. Has anyone had success identifying a vehicle from partial plates / vehicle type via insurance, ANPR, or other routes?
2. Is there any legitimate database, insurer process, or authority route I might be missing that could help narrow this down?
3. Has anyone successfully claimed via the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB) for an untraced driver in a similar situation — and how practical was that?
4. Are there any realistic next steps I should take before giving up on identification?

I’m not trying to accuse anyone incorrectly — just trying to work out whether there is anything sensible left to try before I move on to the uninsured driver route.

Any advice very gratefully received — thank you.

The four van models you name are all the same basic bodyshell, and one of the most common vans in courier use. But your reference to "square" suggests it could have been a Luton-bodied van? That makes make/model identification far harder, because you've got so much less to go from, just the cab.

Many couriers driving un-signwritten vans are self-employed contractors of varying degrees of legality, so even if you can get a plate, that doesn't necessarily get you very far.

As has been said - cheap surveillance cameras like a doorbell are nowhere near as high quality as TV makes out, especially in low light situations, when you're trying to pull detail from WAY outside their intended design parameters. They're intended to allow you to do some basic human-face ID at close range, not to read a numberplate from ten metres or more away on a moving vehicle.

Depending on how much of the partial you have, you might find https://motorscan.co.uk/reg-check useful - but that's really only likely if you're reasonably confident over the start characters.

I don't believe MIB's untraced driver agreement covers vehicles that are untraceable because of a lack of identification. I think you're going to end up with either swallowing the damage yourself or claiming from your own insurance.

Somebody will be along in a minute to suggest a dashcam couldawouldashoulda been the answer.

Aretnap

Mildly_Miffed said:

I don't believe MIB's untraced driver agreement covers vehicles that are untraceable because of a lack of identification.

It does, but mostly it only covers injuries caused by drivers of untraceable vehicles. It only covers property damage if (a) there was significant injury caused in the same incident and (b) the property isn't covered by any other insurance policy.

WellKnownSid

Don’t bother, it’ll be a pointless exercise.

Two days after moving into our current home we had a large motorhome driven by a blind driver destroy a 20 foot section garden wall by reversing into it - twice - the second time significantly faster than the first presumably because they lost sense of forward and back - in front of multiple witnesses and CCTV.

Unfortunately the vehicle had “changed keeper” and tracing the culprit proved way beyond the investigative powers of the grand metropolitan police force.

elsien

Have you asked whether anyone else in the vicinity has got a ring doorbell that might show more details? Worked for me when I was trying to track down the numberplate of the car I wanted to report. 

jimjames

whateverIsaywill said:

1. Has anyone had success identifying a vehicle from partial plates / vehicle type via insurance, ANPR, or other routes?

Really depends how much of the plate you have when you say partial. If it's say BH68XY.. and you're just missing 1 character then it's fairly easy to just put the 26 options through MOT history site to check if the vehicle is the right colour van. Obviously it's possible that 2 sequential letters are allocated to the same brand but will at least help eliminate. But if you only have the BH68.... part then that's not going to be any use.

facade

For your own sanity, let it go and claim on your insurance. You will be down the excess, but having an "at fault" claim as opposed to just a notified accident won't make much difference to your premium.

Assuming that you pay someone to make up "enhance" a viable registration from blurred camera footage, the sort of person driving an unmarked van into parked cars and then driving off is going to be pretty untraceable.

If by some miracle they have actually registered the van so the trail leads back to them they will more than likely deny it was them.

They probably don't even have insurance and when you take them to Court (and win because they won't turn up) they will never pay a penny.

Don't let it eat away at your life for a few hundred pounds spread over several years is my advice.