Hire car crashed- drove off

[Confusedcactus]

I'm just looking for any advice on what to do here;
A friend of mine parks her car outside her house in a busy city road (no drive or alternative), and yesterday her car was damaged by a van whilst driving along. Although the van stopped for a short few seconds, they did not leave contact details or attempt to identify the car's owner.

The owner of the local shop caught this on CCTV, you can't make out the whole number plate, but from the branding you can see that the van is a hire vehicle rented from a vehicle hire company.

My friend is has £500 insurance excess (having only recently passed) and needs her car to get to work. She's reported the incident to the police but they're not looking in to it further.
Does anyone have any idea what she can do in this situation? Is the hire company obligated to take responsibility for uncovering the culprit?

Any thought would be very much appreciated!!

If the damage is under £500 worth, personally I'd suck it up for the sake of not chasing it. Technically, she should be telling her insurance company even if she doesn't claim but I've not done that myself - only bothered if I'm claiming.

The insurance company might not bother to track it down if it's not expensive work.

She could contact the local hire company location, report it to them and see if they identify a van as damaged on return, but some of these rentals can be out for weeka at a time. I'd give them stills / a copy of the CCTV. It could also have been rented further afield - I don't know how well different branches are in contact to identify this vehicle.

It's so strange what's deemed acceptable these days.

Your friend needs to report it to the insurance company regardless of whether she claims for the cost of repair or not. Her insurance company can advise her - ultimately they might try and pursue it with the hire company if she claims and the cost of repair is greater than chasing them in admin time etc.