Studies have shown there's a direct relationship between the number of people who witness something and the number who step forward to help - the higher the number of people the less the chance that someone will offer to help. One explanation suggested for this is that if there are a lot of people around then we tend to think that someone else is already going to help.

We could take advantage of the current state of cell phone technology to help offset that misguided assumption. Since the location of cell phones in use can now be easily tracked we should allow people to join a mobile neighborhood watch when they buy a phone. That way if something happens, an accident, carjacking, bank robbery, etc... a system could track down all of the cell phones that were in use at the time near the area concerned so the police could call those numbers to see if anyone saw anything of any use. It would greatly increase the odds of finding witnesses. The system could even be used to broadcast recorded messages to phones in an area where a child has just been reported abducted to increase the chance of finding them (similar to the Amber Alert system used on highways in the US).

There are items on this link that give some hints about where the current cell phone tracking technology is heading -

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread73604/pg#pid757000

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