Motorists have named supermarket car parks as the number one place to suffer parking scrapes as new research finds two-thirds of drivers says their vehicles have been damaged in car parks.

While two-thirds of drivers say they’ve suffered vehicle damage in car parks, only 8% had experienced damage in work car parks

The research by RAC Insurance found more than a third (35%) of drivers reported that they had experienced this at least once and 31% said they had had it happen on several occasions. Of those who have been affected multiple times 28% say they have endured it three times and nearly a quarter (23%) have seen it more than five times.

Half (48%) of respondents said their car picked up a scratch or dent in supermarket car parks. Public car parks such as those in town centres, at leisure centres and at libraries were named by 16% of drivers, whereas shopping centre car parks were blamed by 11%. Work car parks and privately operated car parks were only mentioned by 8% and 4% of those surveyed respectively.

According to the survey, only 9% of motorists found a note on their car from the person responsible.

Of the majority (70%) of respondents felt the damage was accidental, half (53%) felt it had occurred as a result of another vehicle hitting or scraping theirs while a third (32%) believed it had been caused by a car door being opened onto it. Among those who thought the damage was deliberate, 46% thought a car door was the cause and a third (32%) said it had been ‘keyed’ with a car key.

RAC Insurance director Mark Godfrey said: “We all use car parks every day so the chances of your car picking up a dent or scratch are pretty high, especially as vehicles have got wider over the years while parking spaces generally haven’t.”