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As litigious as American society is today, admitting fault can expose you to liability, so if there is the slightest shred of doubt or the slightest chance it can be someone else's fault it is usually best to keep quiet rather than outright admit it. Keeping quiet is different than finding excuses though.
The only fender bender I have been in in my life was about six years ago when I was in community college. I had just got out of a class that was on one end of the campus and had to go to the other end of the campus. I was cutting across a parking lot at about 10 mph when I heard tires schreeching. I stopped and looked just in time to see a suv hit the right front corner of my car. I knew it was my fault for not looking, and as we got out we both kind of stood there and assessed the damage. Since my car was a pos anyways and all it did was dent the fender, and his suv just got a deep scratch on the plastic bumper cover we decided to let it go. The next day I thought about the screeching tires and went back to take a look at the skid marks. The length of the skid marks showed clearly that he was going far faster than the 10 mph limit posted at the entrance to the parking lot, more like 40 mph. He kept his mouth shut, I kept my mouth shut, even though we both knew we were at fault, we probably didn't realize when it happened that the other person was also at fault. If either one of us had admitted fault we would have been held completely liable for something that was only partially our fault.
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