When you two have finished arguing over bugger all 
i’ll chuck my tuppence in if i may.
I too have been at the game a few years now, when i started we had fairly low cabs with windows all around, though flat mirrors ruined the field of view somewhat but because the cabs were lowish (certainly compared to now) you could see more all around.
Then cabs started to get higher, i had British motors mainly which still had windows all around, the highest of which would probably have been Scammell Crusaders, but had good convex mirrors and decent sized windows.
One of the worse lorries i ever drove for blind spots was the Volvo 88, really high cab with tiny side windows narrow high set windscreen and no down mirrors, these were a nightmare to reverse let alone hope to see any cyclists up the inside, but they did have decent convex normal mirrors.
As times went by the rear windows vanished, but mirrors improved (sometimes too much because reached wardrobe door mirror jobbies on Volvos and MAN’s) and we gained universal down mirrors front and side.
However i think we might have reached the stage of having too many mirrors to keep track of the ever elusive cyclist who is determined to put themselves in harms way (and yes i know too many drivers haven’t a clue how to set mirrors up, using them for bird or plane spotting 
), and in the cut and thrust of the city traffic especially where you need eyes up your arse, it simply isn’t humanly possible to watch every mirror all the time especially at junctions as you start to move away because the second you check all the 4 nearside mirrors and the floor level NS window you can be sure someone will try to take your lane or cut in front from the offside, possible another bloody cyclist on a death wish or an Audi driver most of whom seem incapable of driving in one lane.
The big differences between now and back in the day:
Lorries looked and sounded like lorries, they looked and sounded lethal so anyone sensible didn’t want to get hit by one, the front bumper was a steel bar often with towing eyes, not designed to look soft and pretty but there to do a job, no side guards or smooth edges so you kept away from the bloody thing…for comparsion now look at a low loader, all steel girders and hard corners, they don’t seem to attract the cyclist because the look as dangerous as they are.
Cyclists were generally far more sensible, maybe because common sense was still allowed,and there were a lot less of them just as there were a lot less of all vehicle because the population was at a manageable level.
Cyclists didn’t have this sense of entitlement which seems to have been encouraged by various politicians pandering to their every wish for kudos and votes, down to the new think that in the event of an accident the cyclist is entirely innocent, not as this helps because in the real world an argument between a lorry and anything smaller the lorry always wins, the cemetary is full of innocent people and people who were deemed right.
Drivers have changed too, many should not be at the wheel of lorries and if lorries were like they once were they wouldn’t be driving them anyway, many drivers don’t respect what they are driving nor realise that the vehicle is basically a moving block of steel weighing up to and over 44 tons and anything that gets in the way isn’t going to survive.
Many don’t take any pride in it, and the worse examples (we all work with these) take no care at all and damage of one sort or another is a regular thing, usually unreported, they wouldn’t dream of cleaning the vehicle even the windows and mirrors, nor have the faintest idea of how to or why to set mirrors for maximum vision all around nor care less anyway, we see them every day out there, things so filthy you can’t actually see into the cab so what chance of them seeing the cyclist or pedestrian.
The big issue though is that we simply have too many people moving about on roads that were never designed to service the massive population growth of the country, and that population is going to need far more lorries and buses to service its needs as it continues to grow.
In places like hell, sorry, london, they ain’t going to demolish buildings to make the roads suitable to cope, because the economy (pause for snigger whilst thinking of the £1.7 Trillion national debt) is based on increasing property values and population increase for growth, the two obviously inextricably linked despite what they insist on telling us.
So were are where we are, cramming more and more vehicles onto already bursting roads, public transport wholly inadequate and bus traffic ever slower just as all traffic is sharing the same roads, so ever more people going to cycle to get about.
Whilst cycles and vehicles mix there are going to be accidents and many of them will be lethal, there isn’t the room to segregate and still service the needs of all the people or the city.
