I think the problem with the Titanic was the type of steel which it was made of. The steel seems to have been breakable and that lead to the extensive damages the iceberg caused to the ship. So I think it didn't matter that much if it was a head-first or sideways collision.

My understanding is that had she simply rammed straight into the berg, Titanic might well have survived. To begin with, her bow was supposedly designed to survive such a strike. "Edward Wilding, the senior Naval Architect under Thomas Andrews at Harland & Wolff, testified during the British Board of Trade (BOT) Enquiry that in the case of a head-on collision, the bow of Titanic would have deformed much like the "crumple zone" of a modern automobile. This crumpling would have dissipated much of the force of the blow by spreading it out over several seconds." [http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/item.php/1511.html] Apparently this would have created a much different scenario, particularly because it would have limited the flooding to the forward "watertight" compartments. "Bruce Ismay stated in America that the company had been anxious for the ship to afloat with any two large watertight compartments flooded; with four forward compartments flooded, the ship would probably also have floated in reasonable conditions." [http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5664/10340.html] Since on the night of the collision the sea was dead calm with no wind (which contributed to the difficulty of seeing bergs), Titanic could presumably have stayed afloat with four of the forward compartments flooded. Unfortunately, when she scraped along the side of the berg rather than striking it head-on, Titanic's hull was damaged in such a way that more than four compartments were flooded, so the "conventional wisdom" is that had she simply rammed the berg with her bow, she might well have survived, though we can never know for certain. If you're interested in researching this issue further, here are two excellent sites with considerable information: The Titainic Inquiry Project [http://www.titanicinquiry.org/] offers complete transcripts of both the American and British inquiries into Titanic's sinking. The Encyclopedia Titanica [http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/index.php] offers an amazing wealth of material, including extensive message boards, well-researched articles on a wide variety of Titanic-related topics, passenger and crew biographies, and a number of other valuable resources for anyone interested in Titanic's fate.

If the ship made a head on collision it would have stayed afloat but all the people in the bow would have died so the crew just tried to avoid it, besides, if you were in the crews position would you have just done nothing or try to avoid?