Stopping a ship weighing 100’000+ tons, at 8 knots, in a few meters of distance, is not easily done. The forces needed are nearly unimaginable.
It may be done by transforming the horizontal energy into heat, by crushing concrete, rocks and the ship’s hull. This may well end with a shipwreck blocking the fairway.
More efficient is transforming the ship’s horizontal energy into a vertical one, by elevating the bow; a sort of beaching.
It can be seen in videos from ship breaking yards, where an empty ship, probably only ballasted aft to have propulsion and steering, runs at speed on a rather flat beach. When the bow goes up the ship rapidly stops.
Another example is the container ship ‘Ever Given’ running into the strongly inclined bank of the Suez Canal. She did not go very far into the bank when the bow was uplifted. Pictures of the stranded ship showed the upper part of the bow bulb intact (one of the hull’s strongest parts).
The pictures in the dry dock looked otherwise: The lower part of the bulb and the adjacent bow were crushed flat by the lifting force.
Pictures are in this thread >>> VLCS Ever Given in Shipyard / Drydock
Indeed, these ‘stranding beaches’ around the pillars, need a lot of place. For new bridges, it comes to just enlarge the span width to have the needed canal width. For old bridges… build a new bridge.