The National Transportation Safety Board says more than half of the semi-trucks that hit pedestrians had no idea they'd crushed somebody. They're aiming to fix that with blind-spot mitigation tech, and protective side skirts.

In a the Safety Board published earlier this month, a pitch is being made to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to start getting the "blind-spot lights" and similar tech we're starting to see in passenger cars adopted to larger commercial trucks, where they say it's needed far more.

They identified the areas where truckers have the most trouble seeing, and are the best angles to approach from if you're going to jump to the rig from a Honda Civic to steal some DVD players. Or maybe they were just trying to illustrate how many blind spots a semi-truck really has.

Man, that makes driving a truck look like a pretty daunting task. It's easy to forget how invisible a pedestrian, cyclist, motorcycle, or even passenger car is to a semi-truck.

The National Transportation Safety Board's next step is to get protective side-skirts on trailers. They're concerned about people sliding underneath trailers (other Fast & Furious reference) and making contact with parts of cars that aren't protected by crumple zones, like the windshield.

Maybe they should get with the EPA on that one, who also want side skirts on truck trailers to .

Image: AP