It would depend where I am on and such as what I do.
For instance I live in Chicago and if I am walking down Milwaukee Avenue on a Friday after 9pm and I saw a person lying on the sidewalk I would assume he’s drunk. Why? Because this is what happens. We have a lot of migrant (day) workers and they get paid on Friday and drink all their pay, so they are bombed really early.
If I was walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago, at 9pm on Friday, I’d probably do something.
The woman was probably doing something illegal. Like a drug deal gone bad, and she took off after calling the cops (or not) because of the illegal aspect of it
I live in Phoenix. Except for the poor areas of town, you don’t often see people lying on the ground. Even in south Phoenix, the seedy underbelly of Phoenix, the homeless tend to sleep at bus stops, on park benches or under shady trees. I do not call 911 for these individuals, although now that we’re talking about it, I suppose that a few of those individuals may have been in trouble as opposed to asleep.
The people I have called for were generally lying on the sidewalk, half in the road, entirely in the road or positioned in a way that made it look much more like “I fell” than “I laid down”.
I live in Chicago and came home one day to find a man passed out alongside my back fence. I’d never seen that kind of thing in my neighborhood before, though there have been a few gang-related murders in the area that I’d heard about after the fact. I didn’t check on him but I did go inside and immediately called 911. They sent a police car and an ambulance fairly quickly. I watched from my back porch as they got him up and sat him in the ambulance. He seemed to be just drunk, and the ambulance guys waved to me as if to say everything was ok. I kinda felt guilty for not physically checking on him, but I really wouldn’t have been able to handle it if he’d been dead. I am so not the person you want around in an emergency. I would’ve freaked out, and no one needs that. Better to let the police handle whatever was going on.
It’s only happened to me once and I wasn’t sure what to do. So I went and got the doorman of my building (it was fairly close to my building). The doorman looked at him, and was all, “Yeah, he’s drunk,” and kind of roused him. The guy looked out of it but wandered off. I mean, I felt weird–I didn’t want to “just” call 911 if it wasn’t a big deal, but then again, if I were lying in the road I’d want someone to do something. And then again, why is passing out due to drunkenness something to ignore anyway?
The only other time I was wondering if I should was when I saw two girls, one of whom looked like she was barely conscious. I asked the other one if her friend needed help but she had a cell phone that she was using and said she was okay so I departed.
ETA: As for location, I live in Manhattan.
Last year I had a grand mal seizure and blacked out while sitting at the bus stop. I was damned lucky that a coworker came by along with a visitor to the Science Center – who happened to be a nurse. When I eventually came to, I was being unloaded from an ambulance, but apparently I had woken up before then.
Usually when I have a black out, I’ll wake up extremely confused and wander around for a bit, then go to sleep for awhile. I’m damned lucky I wasn’t around these people.
I came across a guy lying in the road in Chicago Monday night around 11pm. (Lincoln north of Lawrence and Western for you local types) He was in the street but 18" from the curb. I stopped, asked him if he was ok and told him to get on the sidewalk when he indicated he had too much to drink. Waited around to see him crawl onto the sidewalk and took off.
Interestingly enough, two cop cars cruised by while this went down and not one so much as slowed although they had a clear view since there weren’t any cars parked in that particular area.