It would be exciting to be wandering the streets at night, waiting for a distress call to come in. The moment the bat signal -- ahem, the Gaspard -- lights up,

It would be exciting to be wandering the streets at night, waiting for a distress call to come in. The moment the bat signal -- ahem, the Gaspard -- lights up, you sweep in and rescue the damsel in distress from her assailant (naturally he collapses like a throwaway movie ninja), and you earn her undying respect and loyalty. This could work excellently in a comic. I'm not sure how well it can work in the real world. Maybe if they make it really clear the focus is not on racing into battle with the evil assailant, but on just heading over to ask if everything's okay, that could be more useful. In real life, I can imagine so many disasters unfolding -- like, you sprint into an alleyway in response to a call, and see a bleeding woman on the ground with a burly man crouching over her. Q1: His back is to you -- can you take him out before he realizes you're there? Q2: he's actually a passerby, and the actual assailant fled a minute ago. How long will it take you to figure that out? Or just -- escalating violence would be fairly common when totally untrained people race in to deal with violence, but (as other commenters are pointing out) the "good guy" and "bad guy" roles in people's heads don't correspond with the legal outcomes of it all.