Asteroid collisions
Do asteroids in the asteroid belt collide?
Yes, but rarely. Typical named bodies sit about a million kilometres apart, so the belt is empty, not a pinball table. When two do hit, they make a family of fragments on similar orbits. Spacecraft fly through without dodging. The asteroid belt view is honest about how spread out they are.
Empty, with occasional smash-ups
Films pack the belt so the hero has to dodge. The real thing is the opposite. The typical gap between objects large enough to name is on the order of a million kilometres. You could sit in a ship for a long time and see nothing.
Over millions of years, some of them do meet. A hit can make a family: fragments that still share a similar orbit, which is how we know a collision happened. Most of the belt, most of the time, just goes around.
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Jupiter still picks the fights
Resonances with Jupiter pump some asteroids onto crossing paths, which is when a collision — or a path toward Earth — becomes more likely. The Kirkwood gaps are those pumped lanes, emptied. The belt is not a closed box. It leaks, slowly, because Jupiter never stopped stirring.