The cause isn't determined by luck or number - it's determined by the facts that show you or the other person was at fault (or that nobody was at fault).
You don't necessarily have to report mileage for insurance, it only happens for registration when the vehicle changes ownership, and in either case that is the mileage on the vehicle rather than the driver. Someone who drives 100,000 miles a year might very well be doing it in multiple different vehicles.
> Even if you drive 100k miles in 5 years, you should not have 5 accidents that were your fault. That's just insanely unsafe.
It's not a large statistical sample. A large proportion of the people it happens to will be drivers of average skill operating under conditions with above-average risk. Being an unsafe driver isn't the same thing as driving in an area with unsafe intersections.
> The cause isn't determined by luck or number - it's determined by the facts that show you or the other person was at fault (or that nobody was at fault).
Most of these investigations are cursory unless someone dies, and under those conditions they're basically impossible to get right except by chance. One car rear-ended the other, the driver in front says the other one was following too closely, the one in back says the other cut them off and then slammed on the brakes, there were no unbiased witnesses. Whatever goes into that report is going to have the accuracy of a coin flip if the accident isn't one that warrants a thorough investigation -- and even then there may be no way to ever know what really happened.
Even if you talk about someone cutting you off, that doesn't happen often. You aren't going to get 5 "coin flip" accidents in 5 years. There are dash cams if you're really that concerned. Which brings up another good point. If you really think that fault will be attributed to you incorrectly that often, then your insurance will surely go up, so you already have a dash cam to protect yourself from this existing reality you are peddling?
It has to be accurate for everyone. You're talking about imposing a restriction that amounts to house arrest for anyone who can't afford a city apartment or a chauffeur.
> Even if you talk about someone cutting you off, that doesn't happen often.
I see that you have not experienced the wonders of New York traffic.
> You aren't going to get 5 "coin flip" accidents in 5 years.
If you flip a coin 5 times in a row, the chances of it coming up tails every time is 1 in 32. Against a hundred million drivers that's a lot of people.
And that's assuming it's fully random and not e.g. you have the first two falsely attributed to you at random, at which point investigating officers see your record and become biased to finding you at fault in any case going forward.
> If you really think that fault will be attributed to you incorrectly that often, then your insurance will surely go up, so you already have a dash cam to protect yourself from this existing reality you are peddling?
People don't think it will happen ahead of time, they realize it can happen after it already has.
US motor vehicle laws are also (presumably intentionally) designed to let the police come to any conclusion they want as a pretext for searches or revenue-generating citations. For example, hardly anybody follows the speed limit, so if you drive below the speed limit then you're impeding the normal flow of traffic (nominally a violation), and causing a (real) hazard because other cars will bunch up and perform lane change maneuvers to go around you. It's also "suspicious"; the people who do it are disproportionately drunk or in possession of contraband. But if you drive with the flow of traffic then you're speeding which is also a violation.
A dash cam might then help you if an accident is caused by the other driver doing something egregious, but if it's caused by e.g. bad road design and the officer is nonetheless expected to assign fault to somebody, now you're handing them a pile of evidence from which to identify common violations. It's not obvious that it helps you.