How could one build a bumper to protect the piers from an impact like this? That ship is massive and it sounds like it was going pretty fast. I'm having trouble imagining any solution that involves absorbing the impact. But I'm not a civil engineer. If something like this exists I'd be interested in reading about it.
The bumper may be crushed and may need to be replaced but the best outcome is that it redirects the majority of the force away from the critical support structure of the bridge.
Well engineered small things can redirect a moving thing several orders of magnitude more massive. Consider guardrails on the side of a road; those guard rails might be less than 100 Kg but together they're rated to redirect the force of a car weighing thousands of Kg traveling at tens of K/h. That's a lot of force to redirect for such a small and cheap barrier; imaging what a more expensive and larger barrier can do.
Turning in water is a lot harder than turning a wheeled vehicle on land. Cars can turn themselves in a tight radius, container vessels cannot.
I also don't think the weight of the guardrail is what matters. Its strength is derived from the strength of the materials and being anchored in the earth.
In any case, any vehicle driving directly into a guardrail is going to plow right through.
I just don't think this guardrail thing is a great analogy.
They're a pretty good analogy because you use a deflector style guard in the bay that ALSO is anchored in the earth. Nobody stops a whole cargo ship traveling straight at a thing via brute stopping power. You don't do it with cars and you don't do it with boats. You use deflectors that are roughly parallel to the direction of travel. Otherwise, all you can do is build a giant bunker which is not cost effective.
