Comment by gowld
The US sometimes has something similar: visibile countdown timers for the pedestrian crossing turning form stop to go, which coincides with the car light turning from red/stop to green/go.
This encourages people to run the light by trying to turn exactly as the countdown timer hits 0, trying to race against pedestrians trying to cross crossing pedestrians.
You could always do that before in most instances just by watching for the yellow on the cross street too. Though I think the green is often slightly delayed relative to the pedestrian light, precisely to ensure the car cannot win that race legally