If everyone saved $100M by doing this and it only cost one shipper $100M, then of course everyone else would do it and just hope they aren’t the one who has bad enough luck to hit the bridge.
And statistically, almost all of them will be okay!
Making the calculus apparent is why we might have a chance.
Because then anyone who owns a bridge/needs to pay for said bridge damage goes, ‘well clearly the costs of running into a bridge on the runs-into-bridges-due-to-negligence-group isn’t high enough, so we need to either create more rules and inspections, or increase the penalties, or find a way to stop these folks from breaking our bridges, or the like - and actually enforce them’.
It’s why airplanes are so safe to fly on, despite all the same financial incentives. If you don’t comply with regulators, you’ll be fined all to hell or flat out forbidden from doing business. And that is enforced.
And the regulators take it all very seriously.
Ships are mostly given a free pass (except passenger liners, ferries, and hazmat carrying ships) because the typical situation if the owner screws up is ‘loses their asset and the assets of anyone who trusted them’, which is a more socially acceptable self correcting problem than ‘kills hundreds of innocent people who were voters and will have families crying, gnashing their teeth, and pointing fingers on live TV about all this’.
If everyone saved $100M by doing this and it only cost one shipper $100M, then of course everyone else would do it and just hope they aren’t the one who has bad enough luck to hit the bridge.
And statistically, almost all of them will be okay!