Routemasters (again)

"Truebrit" wrote in message
...

Because of this, it is not regarded as an offence to go through an amber
light. The amber phase is necessary to make red enforceable because only
with it is the road user given sufficient warning that he will be able to
stop before the red light.

Going from green to amber I would tend to agree with you but when the
lights are in the opposite sequence and are going from green to amber
there are far to many cowboys who look upon that amber light to get their
clog down.
I much prefer our system here in N America where our lights go from red to
green with no amber in between and that green does not appear until the
red in the cross direction has been lit for five seconds after showing the
warning amber.

There are people who set off on amber instead of waiting for green, although
at least the red is also illuminated during this time to send a "stay
stopped" message. I wonder whether the amber warning of green was partly
included originally to say "time to put move the gear lever from neutral to
first (or neutral to drive in the case of automatic)" so people were not
left doing this when the light went green - which could lead to rear-end
shunts if the car behind is already prepared to set off and doesn't
notice/expect that the car in front isn't ready yet.

Turning left/right (delete as applicable) is probably a good one. What do
pedestrian lights show during this time? Green/walk? It needs pedestrians to
be aware that cars will turn, even if they (cars) *should* give way to them.