I think they are right – you should call hatzalah right away – why waste time, especially if you are completely untrained in dealing with emergencies?
Also, if you give too many instructions, people get confused when confronted with an emergency – the most important message you want to give over is to call hatzalah. Possibly, the reason people don’t help is because they don’t know what to do or they are in a rush. If they know to just call hatzalah (if they can’t do anything else), it would be very helpful, and more people would be likely to do something.