seems like they should have turned left and tried to go under the middle section there instead of cranking all the way around right. I imagine they were under task saturation with the power outages though.

I think we should restrain ourselves from armchair judgements when basically no one here is a harbor pilot, let alone someone informed with what was happening in the moment in this event.

What happened will be meticulously reconstructed and everyone involved in this is going to have their lives put under a microscope for years worth of legal battles. I don't think we should rush to judgement or second guess from a position of ignorance.

It seems traffic has stopped in the last moments before the hit?

Also looks like it's emergency vehicles in standstill that are falling, i can't discern any moving cars at collapse?

The ship's mayday gave them enough time to stop most, but not all, traffic, according to the MD Governor.

I heard through the grape vine they were able to halt traffic across the bridge at the last minute. Only people actually on it when it fell were construction workers who were filling potholes at the time.

The black smoke is most likely them running the engine in full reverse in an attempt to avoid the collision.