A breakdown abroad: what to do, in what order

Hazard lights before you brake, not after. While the car is still rolling it is a vehicle and not an obstacle; use the momentum to get off the carriageway. An exit, a lay-by, a car park, and only as a last resort the hard shoulder, there as far right as you can get and with the wheels turned away from the traffic.

On a fast road the car is the most dangerous place there is. Everyone gets out on the side away from the traffic and goes behind the barrier — in rain, with children, and even if it is only meant to take a minute. Nobody stands in front of or behind the car, and nobody stays inside it to make a phone call.

Put the high-visibility vest on before the door opens, not after — it only works while you are wearing it at the moment you need to be seen. Whether and how far behind the car a warning triangle must be placed, whether a vest is required for every occupant, and whether any of it is mandatory at all, is set by each country for itself. The practical rule sits above all of them: the warning has to stand where a driver who has not yet seen you will see it — on a fast road, considerably further back than it feels.

A position such as “on the motorway heading south” helps nobody. European motorways carry marker posts or kilometre boards at the edge, and that is exactly the detail control rooms are looking for — road number, distance marker, direction of travel. They stand closer together than you would think; often a glance forwards and backwards is enough.

The roadside emergency telephone has one advantage no mobile has: it is fixed in place and tells the operator automatically which post is speaking. It also connects you to the responsible local control room rather than to a call centre in another country. If you have the choice and can walk there safely — behind the barrier, never along the hard shoulder — take the post.

With neither available, describe it in this order: country, road number, direction of travel with the destination named, the last exit or services you passed, and one visible landmark. Newer cars also have an automatic emergency call that transmits position and vehicle data; where and how to trigger it is in the handbook, and that is something you read before the trip rather than hunt for during it.

If anybody is in danger or injured, only one order applies: the emergency call first. The European emergency number works across the member states and reaches police, fire and ambulance; many countries also run their own numbers alongside it. A breakdown service is not an emergency number and does not replace one.

Then comes the question most people ask for the first time at the roadside: which breakdown cover do I actually have? It can come from several sources, and they are different contracts with different territorial scopes. Start looking on the hard shoulder and you will phone the wrong provider and pay yourself.

On the phone it goes faster if you already have the answers: registration and chassis number, exact location, the symptom in plain words, whether the car still rolls and steers, how many people are with you and whether any are children, elderly or animals, your destination, and whether onward travel or accommodation is needed.

Describe the symptom as an observation, not as a diagnosis. “It is juddering and a yellow lamp is on” gets the right help; “the injector has failed” sometimes gets a van that sets off with the wrong part. If you are unsure, describe what you heard, saw and smelled, in that order.

And the one thing to write down without fail: the case or claim number. Everything afterwards — the call back, the tow order, a hire car, reimbursement — refers to that number. Note it on paper, not only in the phone whose battery is running down in exactly this situation.

The recovery truck as a rule takes the car to the nearest workshop that can accept it — not to the one you would have chosen. On tolled motorways the concessionaire or the police may also dictate who may recover the vehicle and to where; that recovery off the carriageway is often a separate service with a separate invoice, and not part of what the assistance covers.

In the foreign workshop the same discipline applies as at home, it is only harder to keep to: diagnosis first, then a quote, both in writing, and authorisation for additional work expressly reserved. A stranded driver tends to sign anything that promises to get him moving again. That is precisely what the case number helps with: in many cases the assistance provider can speak to the workshop directly.

Have the invoice itemised with parts and labour lines, even if you cannot read the language. A lump-sum invoice with no breakdown is hard to claim back and harder still to challenge once you are home again.

Repairing on the spot is the right decision when it is a wear item, the part is available, and you are staying anyway. It is the wrong one when the diagnosis is uncertain or the work concerns a make that is rare in that country — then you wait for a part that has to cross a border, and pay for the days it stands.

Repatriation is included in many assistance contracts, but tied to conditions that are in the contract and not here: usually a minimum repair duration and a ceiling that can be pegged to the value of the car. Ask about that condition before you agree to a repair that lands just below it.

Leaving the car abroad is possible and has consequences in three directions: with the registration authority that holds the vehicle on its register, with the insurer, and — as soon as a customs border is involved — with the customs administration of the country it is standing in. Anyone considering that route settles it with those three bodies, not with the workshop that needs the space.

Assistance contracts mostly reimburse against receipts, and a receipt in a language you cannot read is still a receipt. Collect everything: the tow ticket, the workshop invoice, the hire car agreement, the hotel bill, the train tickets — and photograph every piece of paper immediately, so that none of it is missing at the end of the trip.

Add three photographs worth more later than they seem at the time: the car where it stopped, the odometer, and the dashboard with the warning lamps lit. They answer questions asked four weeks later by somebody who was not there.

Everything above can be prepared at home in twenty minutes. The numbers of the cover you actually hold on a sheet of paper in the glovebox, together with the policy or membership number. A photograph of the registration documents and the insurance confirmation on your phone. A charging cable and a power bank that works independently of the car.

Plus the details you cannot look up at the roadside: bulb type, oil approval, loaded tyre pressures, where the towing eye lives, and the key for the locking wheel nut. This is not disaster preparation; it is simply knowing your own car — and it is exactly what preparing for a long journey produces.