My car, with myself and a friend inside, almost got ran over by a truck when the driver didn't even bother to slow down for the yellow light and crossed at high speed the red light. Luckily he didn't hit anyone.
I totally agree with you.
I totally agree with you.
It's similar to icy roads. If you go the normal speed limit and you slide into another car, it's your fault. The fact that the speed limit was higher than your speed doesn't release the driver from responsibility.
It's the responsibility of the traffic engineers to make sure the yellow light is long enough to accommodate reasonable braking time and distance for all of the traffic that can be on the road, travelling at the posted speed limit. They can lower the speed limit, increase the yellow light duration, or put up a sign limiting the max vehicle weight.
It's not reasonable to expect every driver to know detailed information like yellow light times for every intersection and section of road.
It's a big enough problem that there's a group trying to do something about it.
http://shortyellowlights.com/standards/
EDIT: according to the link, the yellow light for a 55 mph road should last 6 seconds.
Chicago was caught making their yellow lights purposely short on some intersections to make more money.
Given that it's all math at that point, I wouldn't doubt if regulations surrounding minimum yellow-light timing are updated to more accurately represent the stop time of heavy loads. Otherwise it should be easy to prove in court that stopping in time would be impossible given the speed limit & weight restrictions (or lack thereof) in place at a given intersection.