No, of course not.[1] The exact details by state. But there are many problems. Here are some off the top of my head:

1) maximum penalties for allowing insurance to lapse might be light, and if you're a bad driver insurance might be expensive to purchase. Even for much worse than a simple accident, the penalties might be light. For example, for quite a while a nearby city, Portland Oregon, was doing "catch and release" for actual car thieves (I neither know nor care if they still do it). What that meant is if they caught you driving a stolen car the police would write you a citation on the spot and then let you go. You would "promise" to appear in court some number of months later! The argument was that they didn't have enough jail space for such petty criminals.

2) you might be "judgement proof". If you have no assets, even if you are sued, then you just don't pay. People rarely if ever get put in jail if they can't pay a civil judgement. So why bother to continue to pay for insurance if you're driving a crappy car and you don't care what happens to anyone you hit?

3) You might not even have a license, or it might have been suspended for previous bad behavior. (And it's probably difficult to purchase insurance under those circumstances). So, what can the government do, suspend your already suspended license? That probably works about as well as "double secret probation" worked in Animal House.

4) I can think of many similar scenarios, but you get the point

In short, the USA is not at all as homogeneous a country as Switzerland. There are plenty of lowlifes around who just don't give a shit. And very little is ever done by the government to persuade them to change their behavior.

To protect themselves from such situations, many people add "uninsured motorist" coverage to their insurance policy. This means your insurer pays you even if the other guy doesn't have insurance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_insurance_in_the_Unite...