>Which has always seemed a little nuts, like in case of hit and run it would definitely be possible to take action based on a plate alone, both for police and insurance purposes. Unless the registered owner can point to the not-them person who was driving their car at that time, then it was them. Or it was stolen, but either way there will be a clear paper trail.

All that creates a mountain of work and man hours that any police department in America would likely put on low priority.

Basically our legal system is too forgiving and the possibility that someone stole their car (even if it was a friend) and returned it 20 minutes later exists, and therefore it's on the police to prove it wasn't.

And the law is pretty hard to change since it would change it to 'guilty until proven innocent'.

Can I rent a car, get it stolen by someone doing illegal speed and parking during week end, then finding the car back (and luckily the keys!) and return it to the rental?

How is it more mountain-of-workish for the policemen if that’s not a rental but my own?

> Unless the registered owner can point to the not-them person who was driving their car at that time, then it was them.

Not true, at least in the US. You are innocent unless it can be positively demonstrated that you were the one driving.

For a serious enough incident the police will invest the necessary time to collect evidence that you were in fact the one driving. But that's costly to do.