I nearly hit a cyclist with a bus on thursday evening.
It was at
this junction. I was turning right, waiting on the lights to change. When they did change, I checked my mirrors before moving off, and I did notice a bike but he was in the middle of the left hand lane, so I thought nothing of it and carried on. When I checked the n/s mirror halfway round, there was no sign of him in it - and there shouldn't be if he's gone straight ahead.
When I looked back across as I was nearly level with the traffic island, there he was, about 2" away from the bumper.
If I hadn't braked and steered away, I would've knocked him off and possibly killed him.
What got me about the whole thing is that he seemed to be completely oblivious to what had happened, and just carried on (and cycled through the red light at the next junction).
It's not an isolated incident, either. That sort of thing at junctions is worryingly common, though not usuallly quite as bad.
It seems somewhat telling that all the buses are now starting to have signs put on the back of them (like
this) telling cyclists not to pass on the left, and there are still plenty who completely ignore them.