In one of my incidents, the cabbie did not come to a full stop. In the other of my incidents, the friend had come to a full stop, but she did not notice the pedestrian traffic (which, at the time, wasn't common [and without signal] at that intersection).

In any case, yeah, "right on red" should be done away with and we can deal with any negative effects (of not having it) better than we can deal with dead or injured pedestrians / cyclists.