I don't think the term "drive", which you used in the first comment, is generally associated with cycling.

I understand what you're getting at about using your head, but unfortunately we live in a society that needs to cater to the lowest common denominator.

At 3am, when there's nobody around, and you've slowed down and can see for absolute certainty that's it's clear then yeah you could perhaps justifiably run the red light.

But then that concept gets normalised, people start pushing boundaries. Trying it at midnight when there's still some traffic and pedestrians around. Trying it at 4pm because "it was quiet". Guess what's going to happen? Baring in mind how many terrible drivers you witness every single day.

With driving we need to apply Kantian principles.

"I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law."

Or more simply: "What if everybody did this?"

The purpose of the lights is to remove the requirement for everyone's judgement at junctions, because human judgement has been shown to often be poor and result in collisions. Yeah, sometimes it may be unoptimised and you have to wait an extra minute, but really, what's the rush?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantian_ethics