Expounding on what Lee said above, there actually have been a number of serious mishaps with Washington State Ferries ramming docks. In 1998, the Sealth rammed Colman Dock -- Seattle's Main Ferry Terminal -- and caused millions of dollars in damage. I think there were a few injuries in that collision, but no fatalities.
The Sealth belongs to the Issaquah class, which as I understand it, were built so poorly that the ferry system's chief engineer declared them to be unsafe and further said that passengers should not be near the front of those vessels when they were docking. (Those problems have since been addressed and were not an ussue, to my knowledge, in the Colman Dock incident.)
Also, the Elwha is rather notorious for running into things, and has plowed into the docks in Anacortes and Orcas Island. Somewhat fortunately, the Orcas Island dock was scheduled for demolition at the time.
What really jarred me about the Andrew J. Barberi incident was the coverage I heard on the radio about the lack of response by the ferry's crew. It sounded like they were somewhat ill-prepared to deal with the emergency, which seems rather bizarre.
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