I knew someone who had a 42’ Chris Craft twin screw cruiser. He would back into the slip using gearshifts with engines at idle. Gearshifts outboard, throttles inboard.
One night he powered back to the marina with a little rum under his belt. Turned the boat around & began backing toward the slip. Needing to slow, he reached for the gearshifts. But with his eyes on the slip his hands grasped the throttles and....well...POW!
Large boats nowadays have thrusters for docking. Amazing to watch.
Yeah you can turn em on a dime seems like but you still need another person to help tie off etc. here when someone sees a boat coming in there’s usually a couple of ‘neighbors’ waiting to help. Whether you know them or not. It’s just what everyone does.
Not long ago a smaller sailboat on another dock was pulling in really fast and when he hit reverse it couldn’t slow him down enough. He wound up on top of the dock.
I’ve seen all kinds of accidents with boats. Just like cars, crap happens. We took out the davits on a Coast Guard cutter when leaving a guest slip next to it in Newport Beach. Was backing out of the slip and got caught by a current that swung our bow around into the cuter. Our anchor caught their davits and ripped them out. Lol