Have you lost your mind? Worse than Pearl? Not even close.
This collision was in the Straits of Hormuz - which is a nasty passage but nowhere near as narrow as Pearl. What makes Hormuz so difficult is all the danged Omani and Iranian gun boats in the way.
The Bahrain approach is narrow - but again, not as bad as Pearl. As long as 5th Fleet keeps track of that shifting sand bar near the green daymarker it's pretty straight forward and can be done in varying tide conditions.
Pearl is a 2-window per day animal - and if you want daylight it comes back to once a day - and you've got to hope your skipper has enough seniority to get a good slot because it can get plenty busy on a Friday afternoon. I've seen more than 1 ship miss the tides because they were too far down the list.
Pearl doesn't have 18-20 Million barrels of oil a day transiting either.
To All,
My bad! I thought the collision occured in the transit into Bahrain. SOH is bad (traffic) but Malacca is much worse. Thanks to all for the correction.