Why was a large ship not using tugs, to go under a vulnerable bridge that was designed before there were such huge container ships? With the benefit of hindsight, this would seem fairly obvious?
Exactly my first question Rob!
I also thought that there was an initiative under way to protect bridge piers from these kind of collisions following
a Barge crash that brought down a bridge on the Mississippi.
Here's another question for any former navigation crew, one of the videos shows the ship losing power and
making a dramatic turn to Starboard resulting in the collision.
Whilst I can see that a power outage could cause the rudder to become locked, surely she was headed straight to go under the bridge.
So my question is that if a 95,000 ton vessel is proceeding straight at around 8 knots, how long before she would lose steerage and start drifting?