If I can be of help, I stop - i.e. anytime I am a witness[sup]*[/sup], or am the first on the scene.
If I did not see it happen, and others are already on-scene, I do not, unless I think I can add to the effort.
I thought this was a reasonable standard of behaviour. shrug
one exception - there is a very poorly-designed stretch of road wherein 5 lanes are squeezed into 3, and then 4 more lanes are funneled into the #3 lane. Anyone who has EVER driven that road knows to stay out of #3. Consequently, #3 usually has a vacant stretch of 50-60 yards just before the merge lanes enter traffic. I saw one idiot who, upon seeing vacant pavement, ducks into #3 and accelerates - right into the rear of a heavy truck stopped in traffic. I’m hoping that was a full-blown Darwin.
Cranky, let me note that I’ve given my name twice as a witness, and both times the insurance company called me back. Both were on rear-end collisions that seemed to me to be cut-and-dry. Especially from the nature of the questions in the more recent one, I suspect that one driver changed the story substantially. =/
More than five years ago I was involved in a traffic accident. My car wasn’t even four months old at the time. I clearly had the right of way and it was 100% the other person’s fault (it was an elderly man who “thought” he had enough time to make a left hand turn when I was going straight through the intersection on a green light).
Moments after it happened two women in a mini-van pulled up and one of them gave me a piece of paper with her name and number, saying she had seen everything and that she would be a witness for me in any police investigation.