Four things: (A) super-large freight or tanker vessels, even at just steerage way of 5-10 knots, have huge kinetic energy, way more in excess to the design collision strength of bridge pedestals built 40+ years ago; (B) Ship board steering and engineering casualty are not unheard of, they occur, albeit rarely, but the consequences of a collision can be catastrophic; (C) Bridge concrete support pedestals, for bridges built in the 1970s and 1980s, especially those that straddle a busy harbor shipping channel, were not then designed for collision impact from super-large shipping vessels; (D) Massive concrete dolphins, or pillars, or protective jetties of large rip-rap retrofitted to protect the older designed bridge pedestals might have protected the pedestals of the Francis Scott Key from collapse due to collision of a ship in the shipping channel.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge
Recommend retrofitting bridges such as these with massive protective concrete dolphins or pillars, or piles of heavy rip-rap similar to shoreline jetties.
Safety Forecast 