<p>I am not at all condoning what you did but the legalese may not be as simple as people are making out. I won’t jump on you too much as you obviously feel bad about it or you would have kept it to yourself.</p>
<p>When I was in college, we lived in an off campus apt and the church across the street used to let us park in the lot except on Sundays. Very frequently, cop cars would park in the lot (we assumed eating lunch, looking for speeders), etc.</p>
<p>One time I came home from work in the winter and the lot was a sheet of ice. I crept onto the lot but the brakes locked up and I just kept sliding like I was on ice skates right into the front quarter panel of a car which stopped my slide.</p>
<p>All of this occurred in slo-mo, literally probably at 2 mph IN FRONT OF A COP who was parked about 15 yards away. I expected him to jump out of the car and start yelling at me but he did nothing. I actually had to go up and knock on his window and say, “I just slid into that car” to which he responded, “yeah, I saw that”.</p>
<p>I said “what should I do”, he said “you don’t have to really do anything since it’s private property” to which I asked if I should leave my info and he said “if it will help your conscience.”</p>
<p>I did leave the info and a note, the person called me later and said don’t worry about it, “it’s a beater” and we exchanged pleasantries about how bad the weather had been lately.</p>
<p>As a driver there is an assumed risk of driving cars around. I have had people bump my fenders in parking lots, had wind grab a door in the parking lot and bash it into my car making dings and removing paint, I’ve had kids run into the side of my car while they were on bikes and make dents, and shopping carts roll downhill into my car scratching the side. I had someone back into my door at a Big Box store parking lot but they couldn’t get the license plate number from the surveilance video of the lot.</p>
<p>In the cases where it was more than cosmetic, my insurance fixed it. It wasn’t the end of the world.</p>
<p>Still, I think you should have stopped. But now you have to live with that knowledge, so I hope you can make peace with it.</p>