Get the registration number. Before the photographs, before the argument, before anything else — because compulsory insurance in Thailand attaches to the vehicle rather than the driver, and a plate you can read is what makes a claim possible at all. After that: 1669 if you are hurt, 1155 for an English-speaking police officer, stay at the scene, and let the surveyors come to you.

Being hit is the easy half. The difficult half is getting the other side to pay, and how well that goes is decided almost entirely by what you do in the first hour.

Do not let them leave. The commonest way a foreign visitor ends up paying for someone else's mistake is that the other rider apologises, offers to sort it out, and rides off while the visitor is still checking whether their leg works. Photograph the plate first. If they go anyway, you at least have the number, and a number is a claim.

What to do, in order

  1. Photograph the other vehicle's plate. One clear frame. Do this before you do anything else that is not medically urgent.
  2. Call 1669 if you or anyone else is injured.
  3. Stay where you are, and leave the vehicles where they are. Final positions are the strongest evidence in the whole system.
  4. Call 1155 for the Tourist Police. You want an English speaker present before fault is discussed.
  5. Photograph everything — both vehicles in position, damage, the road surface, the signs and markings, the other driver's licence and the compulsory insurance sticker if there is one.
  6. Call your rental company or your insurer so a surveyor is sent for your side too.
  7. Get the police report reference before you leave, and the claim number if a surveyor issues one.
  8. Be seen at a hospital and keep every receipt and every piece of paper.
The damaged rear quarter of the same saloon car, photographed close up at the roadside
Love Krittaya / Wikimedia Commons

Where the money comes from

There are two separate layers and they do different jobs, which is the thing most visitors have not grasped when they arrive at the scene.

Compulsory cover, for injuries

Every registered vehicle must carry compulsory third-party insurance — por ror bor. It covers people, not property, and it pays out on the vehicle that caused the harm. Licensed Thai insurers publish the limits: preliminary medical expenses up to ฿30,000 per person, paid without waiting for fault to be established; ฿35,000 preliminary for death or permanent disability; then, once liability is settled, medical expenses up to ฿80,000 per person, ฿500,000 for death or total permanent disability, ฿200 a day inpatient allowance for up to 20 days, and a combined maximum of ฿504,000 per person.

The preliminary payment is genuinely useful: it arrives without anyone having to prove anything, which is why it exists. The ฿80,000 medical ceiling — roughly £1,840, US$2,320 or €2,000 — is the number to be realistic about. It does not go far in a private hospital, and it is a floor rather than a safety net. Por ror bor explained covers it in full.

Voluntary cover, for everything else

Repairing your vehicle, or compensating you beyond the compulsory limits, depends on the other driver holding a voluntary policy — class 1, 2+, 2, 3+ or 3, all of which include third-party liability. If they hold one, their surveyor attends, agrees fault with your side, and the claim is handled. If they do not, there is nobody on the other side of the table. Thai insurance classes explained sets out what each class does.

The uninsured, the unregistered and the absconded

This is the realistic bad case, and it is common enough on small motorbikes in the provinces that it deserves stating plainly: a substantial number of the machines on Thai roads carry nothing beyond compulsory cover, some carry not even that, and hire motorbikes in tourist areas are sometimes not legally registered at all — a point the UK Foreign Office makes explicitly in its Thailand travel advice.

If the other vehicle has no cover and its rider has no money, the practical answer is that you are unlikely to recover much, and the effort of pursuing it from another country will usually exceed the sum. What you have instead is your own protection:

The police report is the asset. Everything you might later claim from anyone runs through it. Get the reference number written down before you leave the station, and photograph any document you are given. If you cannot read what you are being asked to sign, do not sign it until someone you trust has read it — the Tourist Police on 1155 can help with exactly this.

If you were in a hire vehicle when they hit you

Ring the rental company immediately. Their insurer's surveyor attends, and the damage to their vehicle is their claim, not yours — but the deposit is yours, and it will normally be held until liability is settled. Do not accept a cash offer from the other driver to make it go away; you would be settling a claim on somebody else's vehicle. Accident in a rental car or scooter covers the sequence, and if the argument becomes about what you are being charged, disputing a rental charge in Thailand is the page for that.

Your own position matters even when you were hit

Uncomfortable but true: if you were riding without the correct licence entitlement, without a helmet, or with alcohol in your system, the discussion changes even when the other driver plainly caused it. It gives the other side something to argue with, and it is what your own insurer will look at first. Thai law puts a driver without a valid licence for that class of vehicle on the lower 0.02% blood-alcohol limit regardless of age, which is effectively zero tolerance. Am I legal to drive in Thailand is the checklist to run before you ride, not after.

Things that will not help

Frequently asked questions

Someone hit me and rode off. Is there anything I can do?

If you got the registration number, yes — report it, because compulsory cover attaches to the vehicle and the plate is what identifies it. If you did not, realistically your own travel policy is your protection. Report it anyway; you will need the report for any claim of your own.

Do I claim against the driver or against their insurer?

In practice the claim runs through the insurer, and it is the surveyors who agree who pays. Your job at the scene is to make sure the vehicle is identified, the scene is recorded and your account is on the file.

They have offered me cash. Should I take it?

Not before you know whether you are injured and not on a vehicle that is not yours. Accepting a payment at the scene is agreeing that the matter is closed, at a moment when you cannot possibly know what it will cost you. Settling a minor accident at the roadside goes through when it is reasonable.

How long does a claim take?

Where both vehicles are insured and fault is not contested, the roadside part can be done the same day and the repair follows quickly. Where fault is disputed, or where an injury is involved, it takes considerably longer, and a foreign claimant who has flown home is at a real disadvantage.

Will their insurance pay for my hospital treatment?

Compulsory cover on the vehicle that hit you pays preliminary medical expenses of up to ฿30,000 per person without waiting for fault, and up to ฿80,000 once liability is established. Beyond that you are relying on their voluntary cover, if any, and your own travel policy. Thai hospitals after a crash and what it costs covers the practicalities.

Can I claim for the days of my holiday I lost?

Not through the compulsory scheme, which pays a fixed inpatient allowance and medical costs and nothing else. Some travel policies pay a benefit for hospitalisation abroad — that is a question for your own policy wording, not for the Thai insurer.