Petrol station forecourts in Croatia

A forecourt is the one place on a long drive where the car stops, other people's equipment stands within a metre of it and dozens of vehicles manoeuvre every hour. <b>For a driver passing through the country it is also the place least likely to be revisited</b> — which is why the first few minutes decide everything.

Why this is a subject of its own

The ground and the equipment belong to the operator. Priority on a forecourt is not regulated the way it is on the road, movements cross freely, and the hose, the nozzle, the island and the canopy support are all somebody else's property. A single event therefore produces two descriptions: one of the vehicle and one of the installation.

The driver is passing through. Most of the traffic here in summer has never used this forecourt before, does not speak the language of the staff and will be two hundred kilometres away by evening. Anything not recorded on the spot is, in practice, not recorded at all.

Boundary: fuelling mistakes and their effect on the engine have an entry of their own, and so does damage found after the journey home. This one stays with what happens on the ground itself.

What Croatia adds to the picture

Seasonal density on a small network. Between June and September the same forecourts serve local traffic, holiday convoys, caravans and delivery vans in the same lanes. Reversing to reach a free pump, in a queue, with a trailer behind, is the single most common start to these events.

Islands with one station. On several islands there is a single station for the whole island, often unattended outside the season. There is then nobody to confirm anything on the spot, and the next opportunity to ask is on the mainland.

Gas is ordinary here, and heat is too. Many vehicles refuel with autogas at a separate point on the forecourt, which changes the layout and the manoeuvring; and a surface heated all day makes spilled fuel and oil harder to see and easier to slip on.

What to record and where the inspection happens

Photograph the vehicle at the pump where it came to rest, before anybody moves it, with the damaged equipment in the same frame. That single image cannot be reconstructed afterwards from any description.

Record the height of the mark above the ground, measured the same way on the vehicle and on the equipment. The island kerb, the guard, the pump housing and the canopy support sit at four different heights, and that figure identifies the point of contact.

Keep the receipt and note the pump number and the time. The receipt is created automatically, without anyone deciding to make it, and it ties the vehicle, the place and the minute together; ask the staff for a short written note of the incident while you are still there. We come to the vehicle, usually within one or two days and anywhere along the route.

Frequently asked questions

I drove off with the nozzle still in the tank. What is damaged?

Usually two things on two sides: the filler flap, the neck, the seal and the paint behind it on the car, and the hose, the nozzle and the breakaway coupling on the station. If that coupling released as designed, the damage is far milder, and the difference belongs in the first photographs.

The station was unattended and I am leaving the country tomorrow.

Then photograph everything, keep the receipt, and ask in writing the same day for the recording to be preserved, giving the date, the time and the pump number. Written contact from abroad works; a phone call a week later usually does not, because the footage is gone by then.

Another car damaged mine at the next pump and drove away.

Time is what counts, because the recording is overwritten within days. Note the registration and the pump number, ask at the till for a short written confirmation of the incident, and keep the receipt. Assessment of the damage itself then proceeds exactly as after any other event.