Some amount of that is inevitable, but there is another level of defensive driving where you anticipate poor behavior and arrange that it won't cause an accident.
Have a look at a few dash cam accident videos [1]. There are many maladaptive patterns of behavior, but a frequent one that the average good driver can improve on is limiting speed on two occasions: when approaching a blind spot, and when passing stopped or slow traffic.
That second one gets lots of otherwise good drivers. They seem to think that by limiting their speed vs slow/stopped traffic they'd be encouraging people to dart in front of them. Which is somewhat true. But with limited speed, that's an avoidable or less injurious accident. By gunning it past stopped traffic, you make the accident unavoidable and more serious.
Have a look at a few dash cam accident videos [1]. There are many maladaptive patterns of behavior, but a frequent one that the average good driver can improve on is limiting speed on two occasions: when approaching a blind spot, and when passing stopped or slow traffic.
That second one gets lots of otherwise good drivers. They seem to think that by limiting their speed vs slow/stopped traffic they'd be encouraging people to dart in front of them. Which is somewhat true. But with limited speed, that's an avoidable or less injurious accident. By gunning it past stopped traffic, you make the accident unavoidable and more serious.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@IdiotsInCars1