Apologies if I'm wrong. Can't find anything right now (no time to search further) except some clarifications that accidents closer to home are often with parked cars, not often fatal, at slower speeds, and that possibly the biggest reason is simply because the majority of our driving is close to home.

It's that last item that I'm focussing on.

In other words, are we statistically more likely to crash near home? Yes. Are we more likely to have an accident simply because we are close to home? Not likely. If two thirds of accidents (for example) are within 5 miles of home, what percent of your driving is within 5 miles? If it's also two thirds, then it's a useless statistic that is thrown around for FUD purposes.

I can't back it up right now, though.

That makes intuitive sense, and when I reasoned about your comment earlier that's the general direction my thinking went.

I live pretty much exactly one mile from my work, and the two nearest shopping centres are less than half a mile beyond that.

I'd definitely be interested in seeing some heat maps of representing this data. It's easy to believe that the majority of people live close to at least one of the places they most often travel to, whether that is a workplace or other activity, and I think you're right that this is an important metric within which to consider such statistics.