I tend to agree with you. I'm not ignorant about my driving. That's the *reason* that I'm a conservative driver.
I've been a driver for 24 years. In that time, vehicles I own have been involved in 5 collisions. In two of those, the vehicles were parked and struck by other motorists. In one, the vehicle was stationary, but not parked, and struck by another motorist, in one, I backed into a car that was going around 25 mph through a gas station parking lot (lesson learned), and in one, I clipped some poor guy's '63 skylark with a humvee when doing a courier run at the very end of a 24-hour CQ shift (I still feel like a jackass about that one...I'd swear I looked right and things were clear, but I was obviously wrong).
Aside from that, I've had one claim arising from a hailstorm that beat the crap out of the family minivan.
I was not giving some list of things I do that make me perfect, because I'm not perfect. What I am is cautious, mainly because I'm not made of money, and deductibles are not my friend. I don't drive strictly the speed limit, but I always follow at a safe distance for the road conditions, and I pay attention to folks behind me who don't do the same. I let faster drivers pass me and move over to make that easier when possible. I signal lane changes and turns. I change lanes before the last minute so that I don't have to worry about cutting someone off.
I do all of those things for a couple of reasons. First, I don't want to be the cause of an accident and cause damage to myself, someone else, my car, or someone else's car because it sucks for everyone when that happens. Second, I don't want to pay any more money than I have to for the privilege of driving.