Consider yellow to mean "stop", and the length of it becomes irrelevant and the roads become a little bit safer.
And then the red light cameras start magically getting bullet holes in them.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/dec/12/police-man-shot-cam...
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/08/shoot_out_the_red_l...