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Comment by dwightgunning | Hacker News Reader

DALI (IMO: 9697428) is a Container Ship and is sailing under the flag of Singapore. Her length overall (LOA) is 299.92 meters and her width is 48.2 meters [1].

Based on the track, it appears the ship changed course slightly and slowed as it approached the bridge [2].

[1] https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:28...

[2] https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:2810451/zoo...

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That's clear in the livestream video too. It's like it was fairly on track then changed to head straight for the pylon. A lot of smoke starts coming out of the funnel at the same time as the course change, and the ship's lights go out before impact.

It appears to have lost power twice before veering into the foundation of the bridge..

How often would a large ship like the is lose power? Seems like terribly poor timing.

Problems are disproportionately likely to show up right as you start out on a journey.

I had assumed this was coming in, but starting out would make more sense.

Thanks for the link to the track. That's the first thing that I've seen that showed that I guess it's regular for these ships to pass under the center of this bridge. Is that correct?

If so, what I'm still not understanding is why ships are allowed to make that passage all on their own without any backup like a tugboat and why the bridge doesn't have secondary protection of its pillars. Because with a track like that and lack of either of those things, a catastrophic collision seems inevitable.

Does anyone know why the ship would make a sudden hard right during a sequence of power failures?

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