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A new parking study commissioned by RAC Direct Insurance suggests car park prangs are costing UK motorists £2.4 billion each year. The study found that over half of all motorists have either damaged another car, or had their own car bumped in a car park, with supermarkets the most common places for dents to occur.

Almost three quarters of these drivers have been the victim of a hit and run car park prang, in which they have returned to their car to discover it scraped but with no contact details left by the offending motorist.

On average, motorists pay £293.57 to fix their car park prang and over 800,000 drivers have had to spend over £1,000 to repair the damage.

A tenth of all UK motorists, and one in five drivers aged 25-34, still admit to driving off after causing a prang without leaving a note and the reasons given by men and women for doing a runner are very different: Three quarters of men don’t think a small prang is a big deal, compared to two thirds of women. Twice as many men than women drive off because they don’t want their insurance premiums to rise. A quarter of male motorists, and one in ten female drivers, do a runner because their car has been a victim of a previous hit and run so they don’t feel like they need to leave their own contact details.

Women are twice as likely to leave because they say they “felt guilty” than men; women are also more likely to be afraid of confrontation.

The research also uncovered the typical profile of a hit and run car park ‘pranger’ – motorists, it suggests, should be most wary of women aged 25-34, driving small blue hatchbacks. The least likely offenders are men aged 45-54, driving yellow trucks or vans.

And motorists who live in the North East, and do their weekly supermarket shopping on a Saturday, should also watch out as this is the most likely time and place for a car park run-in. The safest place and time to park in Britain is in a leisure centre car park in the South West of England on a Sunday.

RAC Direct Insurance’s Rob Wilson concludes: “Many minor car park prangs cause damage that falls below the excess on a driver’s comprehensive policy, so RAC Direct Insurance recommends that motorists check whether their car insurance policy includes “Legal Expenses” cover, which can be used to help claim back the cost of minor repairs from the culprit’s own insurers.”