That video illustrates the mentality of a lot of our traffic engineers in this country. Instead of setting up the lights in a sequence that allows smooth, flowing traffic at a reasonably fast speed, they seem to have them timed to snarl up traffic by creating unnecessary, repetitive bottlenecks. The newer "on demand" lights are no different - a car pulls up on the side road and instantly, traffic on the main thoroughfare is brought to a halt so that the one lonely car can proceed (and is often making a right turn which can be done legally on red).
That and the excessively long red lights on major routes are why people are intent on pushing the yellow to the limit. For to stop means 2-3 minutes more travel time.
That might not seem like a lot, but it adds up quickly. I can make the 12 mile venture to work at 04:30 in about 15 minutes. It takes almost a half hour to drive home because of traffic lights (and slugs that clog up the road, but that's another issue).