if not, they can't
and people on foot need to be sure that nobody is going to come that way, it's not the bikers decision.
rules are rules, they ate there for safety reasons, exceptions to the rules, are still rules.
> , I find that traffic lights are fundamentally designed for motor vehicles
they are designed to simply make precedences rules obvious.
they were invented for railroads.
I dream too of a way for people to always be allowed to cross safely, for example using light bridges, for pedestrians
except that when they are available, like where I live, bikers use them even if they are explicitly forbidden to any vehicle.
this is the bridge, you can clearly see the sign and the blockers
https://blog.urbanfile.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018-0...
> they are designed to simply make precedences rules obvious.
While what you are saying is true, the crosswalk signals that accompany traffic lights have a considerably shorter green than that for automobiles. Traffic lights are also timed to favour the continuous flow of motor vehicle traffic, rather than pedestrians or cyclists. In other words, pedestrians (and, to a lesser degree, cyclists) are considerably disadvantaged by traffic lights.
Another consideration for cyclists is that amber lights are timed for motor vehicles. Entering an intersection as the light changes means that a cyclists will usually be leaving the intersection once the light is red. On the other hand, stopping under such circumstances is an excellent way to be struck by an automobile from behind since the driver does have enough time to clear the intersection.
Judging from what I've seen on Not Just Bikes, it is possible to design controlled intersections that strikes a more reasonable balance between multiple users. Unfortunately, that is not the case in my neck of the woods yet.
If you look at the details of most controlled intersections in my city, it becomes abundantly clear that pedestrian and cyclist safety were (at best) secondary considerations. Some of them are so bad that pedestrians are expected to wait to cross in a blind zone. Things are slowly changing around here, unfortunately it takes a lot of money to undo something that should have been done properly in the first place. NIMBYism also makes change near impossible in many areas, since the loss of as much as one on-street parking spot per block is considered by some to be a more heinous crime than pedestrians being run down. (Thankfully parts of the city are seeing change due to lower vehicle ownership by nearby residents.)
Not all the red lights are like that.
There are indeed different rules for cyclists. There's the Idaho Stop and variants, Paris allows cyclists to go treat red lights as give way. Here in the UK, some one-way roads have a bit of paint to indicate that cyclists can use it in either direction.
Personally, I find that traffic lights are fundamentally designed for motor vehicles and there's better designed junctions that can allow cyclists/e-scooters to go through (with care) whilst the larger vehicles are stopped. Also, zebra crossings are much better for cyclists to use as they don't have to automatically stop (which costs speed, momentum and energy) when there's no-one on it or if they can safely pass behind the person crossing.