Actually, many bullets, including some .22 rimfire shoot more accurately than the solids. They just don't have as much range because of the lower ballistic coefficient. The accuracy seems to me likely to be due to there being less inertia in the nose contributing to the centrifugal effect during coning motion in initial yaw. it may also be the slightly longer bearing surface helps, but having shot a number of the
60 grain subsonic Aquila bullets, I don't think that's the main thing. The caveat is that the hollow points have to be symmetrical. If you have a bullet spinner and select out the well-balanced ones first, you will find this out.
While I subscribe to Cooper's admonition that the role of a sidearm in combat is to fight your way to a rifle, most personal encounters are over long before you have time to do that, as, outside of your home or a theater of combat, rifles are not normally conveniently around to fight your way to.
When I knew him, then in his 70's, Jeff Cooper would occasionally demonstrate he could still hit a teacup at 50 yards with his 1911. I can hit a row of poppers at 100 yards with mine at a deliberate pace. You just have to remember hardball will fall about a foot going that far and aim just over the head to compensate. Otherwise, it is no more difficult than hitting the 9-ring on a conventional pistol 50-yard target, and from prone is not all that extremely challenging if your gun's accuracy is good.
The size of a popper above the front sight will give you a reasonable range estimate, and I drilled a 45-yard popper mostly hidden by brush in one of the wadis at Gunsite in my first class there. It's not a skill you have a high probability of using, but one of Cooper's other teachings was to be a better shot than your opponent so you can reliably place hits on him from a greater distance than he can reliably place hits on you from.