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As far as the getting involved question goes, I have something to contribute:
A few years ago, my wife and I were out with 5 or 6 friends for dinner. We were walking on the sidewalk on a one-way street back to someone's house when a guy going the wrong way up the street apparently fell asleep/passed out and sideswiped 4 or 5 cars. There was a considerable amount of damage done. The car kept veering farther and farther over until it got to the last car and then it went straight into a telephone pole. The driver didn't get out and just sat there for a minute. We just sort of stood there for a second, and then I started to walk over. I got within about 20' of the car when the guy put it in reverse and backed up into cars parked on the other side of the street. Something in the steering mechanism was broken, so he could only go backwards and forwards. He ended up ramming the car and the telephone pole 6 or 7 times before he gave it up.
The guy was bleeding pretty good from a head cut, and it turns out that one of the cars that he sideswipped had 4 very large guys in it. One of them got cut by some flying glass. One of my friends that was there that night is an ER doctor, and he sort of looked the guy over real quickly and told the guy to get some bandaids since it wasn't too bad and he didn't have glass in his eye. He (my doctor friend) wanted to leave before the cops showed up or anything else happened and didn't want to be involved at all as long as no innocent bystanders were hurt. We all had a long discussion that night on whether or not it was the right thing to get involved at all or to wait around for the cops (which we ended up doing). Basically, my doctor friend and I ended up on opposite ends of the spectrum since I always go towards the disturbance (whatever it is) to see if I can help. He always does the exact opposite because he says that he sees enough of it at work to every want to see things happen on the street.
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