"The foremost reason was intimidation by police," he says. "Oftentimes if you assist someone the police will assume you're helping that person out of guilt." Apart from the fear of being falsely implicated, people also worried about becoming trapped as a witness in a court case - legal proceedings can be notoriously protracted in India. And if they helped the victim get to hospital, they feared coming under pressure to stump up fees for medical treatment.
I always wonder about this when I see people arguing against socialized medicine. Should accident victims be left to die like this? Any answer besides "yes" implies some sort of government intervention. In the US, since 1986, ERs must treat everyone. This basically gave us a really bizarre socialized medicine system with horribly inefficient funding and procedures.
If they were able to bill insurance, or the person, later, then the fund would be replenished.
So it is possible to say "yes" and not have government involved.
A quick story in Pakistan: A brain surgeon had a lot of success doing brain surgeries and received much fame, award, and status worldwide, and even though he started out modestly helping the poor and less fortunate, fame and greed got to him, and he became more demanding in terms of payment.
Well, a man brought in a young individual involved in a car accident who had received a big blow to the brain to the hospital where the doctor worked. The young man was a passerby to the accident and a complete stranger. He begged and pleaded this world famous doctor at the hospital to operate, but the doctor wanted payment. He eventually offered his own car keys as a security deposit for the time being while he would try to raise money in other ways. The doctor accepted the security deposit and began to operate. It was too late, however, because when the doctor opened the curtain he found the injured individual to be his son about to take his last breath. The doctor went insane and died.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prNYOW0_kms
PS - Even if my memory is from another source regarding Japan, the documentary showed me a lot I didn't know.
In terms of "don't involve yourself", I wouldn't say that's really true. The very few times I've seen anyone in trouble, people have rushed to come to their aid. I live in the countryside, though, so it might be different than the big city. Social duty is a big part of Japanese culture, though, so I can't really imagine people ignoring others in distress.
As a brief diversion, I recently went to Tokyo and was surprised by how many more homeless people there are now than there were roughly 10 years ago. People seem inured to that kind of distress (as they are in any big city, I guess), which is too bad.