What is the point of the traffic signals? A big part of it is safety.
I promise you, no matter what cyclists are doing at red lights, cars are orders of magnitude more dangerous than cyclists.
Cyclists should obey the law, but people focusing on cyclist skipping red lights are missing the point: cars kill people, cyclists don't.
Moreover, if a cyclist causes an accident, they will almost certainly be seriously injured even if they hurt others too. Meanwhile, car drivers can expect to walk away from any low speed accident, even if they just plowed through a crowd of pedestrians.
No red lights are not a safety measure, they make car traffic go faster. Most intersections have better throughput without redlight for smaller vehicles at slow speed. As long as the speed of cars is lowered to something safe they are also a lot safer.
But that's the point! If the road was bicycles only, the traffic planning would be entirely different, most likely either no traffic light at all, or a small roundabout.
Traffic signals only exist to accelerate car traffic. They slow down everyone else.
The most dangerous thing you can do as bicyclist is stopping, because the first ~10 meters after you’ve just started cycling again your balance won’t be perfect yet. And it happens that these few meters are almost always right in an intersection, in a conflict zone with cars.
I promise you, no matter what cyclists are doing at red lights, cars are orders of magnitude more dangerous than cyclists.
Cyclists should obey the law, but people focusing on cyclist skipping red lights are missing the point: cars kill people, cyclists don't.
Moreover, if a cyclist causes an accident, they will almost certainly be seriously injured even if they hurt others too. Meanwhile, car drivers can expect to walk away from any low speed accident, even if they just plowed through a crowd of pedestrians.