It is possible to give shockingly correct estimates, but management doesn't like to hear how long it'll actually take, they just want to hear the number they already imagined.
The problem is that (a) most organizations don't track and record the time to do anything and (b) people don't want to take the time to break down tasks to units similar to something they did before. Estimation is itself a time-consuming task.
This is the sort of thing you do when the unthinkable outcome shifts from idle workers to late delivery: Today, it's unthinkable to management for workers to be idle. If instead it were unthinkable for the project to be late, they would have to accept some risk of idleness to create that outcome.
Of course, you can always start doing prep work to de-risk the project, such as spikes, POCs, et cetera, within the planning phase. This might allow you to pad less but retain the certainty of your outcome.