Understanding in a car crash?

On Tuesday nights, Billy bowls in a league. Since I'm off from school at the moment, I've been going with him to hang out and watch him play. This past Tuesday (Jan 5), we left the bowling alley around 11:45 to head home, I was driving because Billy had imbibed a few beverages this evening and I had not. Approximately a quarter mile down the road, I watched the car in front of me drift off the side of the road, slam into a telephone pole, and continue forward into a second telephone pole. A key detail here is that at no point during this even, did the vehicle signal or apply the breaks. In a panic, the only phrases I managed to get out of my mouth was "OH MY GOD!" and "WHAT SHOULD I DO?!" Billy screamed at me to pull over and he ran like hell up to the car and called 911. Car parts were all over the road. Our immediate intuition was that this was a drunk driver, probably kids younger than us, but this was not the case. In fact, it was an older man who Billy recognized from the bowling alley, but did not know his name. Shortly after, another car pulled over to offer assistance, and it happened to be a state vehicle with lights on top which helped oncoming traffic slow down. Within 10 minutes, police and other emergency vehicle arrived on the scene. We're pretty sure that the man had a heart attack because he never put on his breaks to slow down- even after hitting the first pole, and incidentally taking down at least 2 mail boxes. They got the man onto a stretcher and into the ambulance, which sat there with the man inside for at least a half hour. Apparently, they did not think the man was going to make it, and were trying to stabilize him. If he had died, it would have changed the whole situation and the kinds of reports that needed to be taken. We were kept there by the police until just after 1am, and they asked if we could come by the police station at 9am to file a witness report. We were exhausted, but were absolutely willing to help in any way.

It's funny how we're conditioned to respond to police. Billy and I both knew we'd done nothing wrong, and were in fact contributing helpful information to an awful situation, but the two of us were so nervous talking to the police. They spoke to us separately, but when we were leaving and comparing our experiences, we discussed how nervous we felt. I guess that's the persona they're aiming to achieve, intimidating and authoritative. We found out that the man was still alive and at a hospital, but they couldn't give us any further details. The next day, we found out from people who also bowl in the league that the man was in a coma. We haven't heard anything since, but we're hope in the best.

While we were sitting in our car, watching the police do their jobs and the paramedics removed the man from the car, Billy expressed guilt saying something to the effect of "if I had run faster and called 911 faster, they could have gotten him out of there sooner and maybe he'd be better off". Still stunned from the overall circumstances, I knew I had to stop the guilt before it manifested into a monster. We did everything that we knew to do. We could have driven past the accident, not called 911, and pretended nothing happened- we wouldn't have known anything about who it was and what caused it. Had we not done anything, then we would be the rightful owners of a guilt monster, but that is not the case. There is no way to prepare yourself for some of the unbelievable things that you are going to experience, and thus it's impossible to hold yourself accountable when you're simply running on instincts and guts.