The Bridge-master wasn't watching carefully. He lowered the bridge to soon, that was the problem.
Watch the movie again, and you can see the bridge lowering, before the deckhouse is under it. After the ship crashes into the bridge, he tries to rise the bridge again. Ofcourse it could be a malfunction of the bridge.
Since a ship doesn't have brakes, the only thing the captain could do is abandon the wheel-house, leaving the ship uncontrolable. There are back-up controlls for the engine, i don't know if they have them for the rudder as well. So the engineer could stop the engine, but that's all.
All in all, it's to bad these things happen, but what can you do?