And yet I have vivid memories of many situations that weren't dangerous in the slightest, and essentially verbatim recall of a lot of useless information e.g. quotes from my favorite books and movies.

I am not sure exactly what point you're trying to make, but I do think it's reductive at best to describe memory as a tool for avoiding/escaping danger, and misguided to evaluate it in the frame of verbatim recall of large volumes of information.