Hypothetical situation: Hit and run
 

You are on the road, nobody is around. You see a child crossing the street and the only other car around crashes into that child and drives off. You are the only other person around that could have witnessed this tragedy.

What do you do?

A. Stop and help the child while using your cell phone to get an ambulance and provide a weak description of the car who hit the kid and drove off and which direction they went. Also you try to provide as much assistance to the child that you are capable of.

B. You follow that bastard while using your cell phone to call for an ambulance of where the child was hit and tail the bastard until police help arrives and brings that ****er to justice, which the police probably wouldn't have been able to do if you stopped.

I think there are very strong cases for both scenarios and I am not exactly sure which is the correct response. If you are a doctor or an EMT, you obviously stop because you will have the skills to help the kid before help arrives. But an average joe wouldn't know for sure how to help, but maybe they could do something, maybe not. But by stopping, the hit and run guy most likely gets away.

What would you do?

Only a dumbass would leave the child.

Have to agree. Far better for the bad guy to get away than for the kid to die.

Where's the "chase the POS down and run them off the road into a nice big tree" option?

Even if you know the kid is going to die, I'm not sure you leave him to die alone. I'd be there to provide as much help and comfort as possible.

Stay with the child. Could you imagine laying there all alone?

Take as much of a mental snapshot as you can. Color, make and model of vehicle. License plate if possible. But you do not leave the child.

I wouldn't leave the child, but frankly, I doubt that anything I might be able to do will prevent the child from dying.

The other thing is, even if you dont know what to do it's not like when you call in that they are going to take down the location and say thank you, bye. They are going to walk you through what should be done.

I think it's a tough situation. The ambulance is coming no matter what, because you would have your cell phone. Stay with the child providing whatever help you can seems like the option I would take, but I would also really really want that bastard brought to justice.

I just hope that if I ever find myself in that kind of situation, that I stayed at a Holiday Inn the night before.

Chances are, they didn't do it on purpose, and they freaked. They'll either turn themselves in, or they will have to live with it the rest of their life (which they'll have to do anyway). It's not like they're on their way to see if they can find another kid to run over.

Eh, there are millions of possibilities in terms of the severity of the injury. And a ton of them would be helped by someone by someone with a very basic understanding of the human body. For example, I'd hope that just about anyone could say, "Look at that giant gash with blood pouring out of it. Perhaps I should try to put pressure on it to reduce the blood loss."

You're probably right that, in many cases, you wouldn't be able to do anything. But no way am I driving off without trying.

In all honesty. I'd probably just walk away. No need to stick your nose in others business.

On a side note, WTF did this thread topic come from?

also, there are too many people out there who it wouldn't bother them a bit. Being freaked out and having to live their life normally isn't good enough for me. I still think I would stop, but I would be very tempted to follow.