Freee!!

Where did you find this one? Looks like one of Mauk's.

The Dutch police probably would have as well. And the Dutch police strongly prefer not to shoot, but if they have, they prefer to shoot to kill.

Had good experiences with them when they still flew to Europe (second and third trip to Thailand, about 95/96).

No, they are going to be called lunar-tocks 😉

"Suicide is painless".

For some reason I get associations with the M*A*S*H tune and specifically one line.

I experienced one as it woke me up in Utrecht: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Roermond_earthquake I don't really care to repeat the experience.

Too much foam on top of the British beverage.

The Schiphol Sheraton is within (covered) walking distance from the terminal(s). That is all I know about it though. As for a train into and from Amsterdam Centre, there is at least one train per hour the whole night. Below an excerpt of the departures from Amsterdam Central to Schiphol: I would avoid the 00:55 though, takes one hour for a 15 minute trip.

So split the shipping channel in two one-way channels. NB: I am not an expert, just pointing out possibilities. There may be circumstances I don't know about.

The collapsed bridge had a couple of piers, so replacing those with one central one (with sufficient protection) should be a no brainer.

Singapore might be an exception due to lack of sufficient qualified nationals for the job.

That is 10-plus years as apprentice pilot, so add another 10-plus years prior to that on the bridge.

As far as I know, the rule world wide is that pilots have the nationality of the waterway (singular!) they navigate. The only exception to this rule I know off is in case of a shared waterway on the border. On the Westerschelde (Netherlands), there are also Belgian pilots for the Belgian ports of Antwerp and Ghent.

Unless there are very strange exemptions in place, the pilot most likely still has the USA nationality.

The answer to that question is money.

The pilot will have to do at least as much explaining, unless it is a power failure, which the captain may have to explain as the person responsible.

Fair enough, but the only heads that will be rolling will be those of the people responsible for the lack of protective measures around (the pillars of) the bridge. Engine failures do happen, also aboard ships. If I am not mistaken, the ship was registered in Singapore, in which case it was probably well maintained.

In this case the defenses were needed upstream of the bridge.

As it happened in the USA, that is a given. Doubtful, most if not all insurance companies re-insure to avoid that problem. As it happened in the USA, that again is a given. AMEN! Call me Thomas, I'll have to see it before I believe it.