Glossary
Accident Record
A documented incident in a vehicle's history. Sources include insurance claims, police reports, inspection findings, and repair invoices.
Definition
An accident record is any documented incident involving structural, mechanical, or cosmetic damage to a vehicle. Records come from four kinds of source: insurance claims (where the insurer pays for repair), police reports (where the incident involved injury, public road damage, or another party), inspection findings (UK MOT, German HU and similar systems sometimes note prior repair quality), and repair invoices held by dealer service systems. Coverage is patchy and country-dependent: Belgium's Car-Pass system covers every insurer-recorded incident, the UK's MIAFTR insurer-shared register covers total losses but not minor claims, and Germany has no central accident register at all. The strongest practical accident-record check today is the combined output of a paid inspection-history aggregator plus listing-history scraping that catches re-photographed cars with new panels.
Why it matters when buying a used car
Most used cars over five years old have at least one minor incident on record. The question is not 'any history' but 'structural history' — the kind that affects safety or resale.
Use this on Carlytics
Often confused with
Salvage title
A title brand placed on a vehicle that an insurer has declared a total loss. Common US designation; the EU equivalent varies by country.
Title brand
Any permanent notation on a vehicle's registration record indicating significant history — salvage, flood, lemon, theft recovery.
Lemon law
Consumer-protection statute that lets a buyer return a chronically defective new vehicle. Strong in the US; partial equivalents exist in the EU.