Funny that. I moved to Canada too. While I live remote enough to not see many traffic lights on the regular, I do agree with you that they're horribly timed in most cities. And while we're on stuff that makes no damn sense over here: right on red is the stupidest thing anyone ever came up with in terms of traffic laws. It alone is responsible for (iirc) 30% of fatal accidents in North America. Whoever thought it'd be a good idea to have pedestrians cross at the same time as allowing cars to take a corner into them is an absolute madman. It's almost as if they want to encourage pedestrian/cyclist crashes with motorvehicles. I mean, left on red (BC and some other places) for as stupid as it sounds even makes (a very little bit) more sense than right on red. At least you're encouraging crashes between motorvehicles with that one instead of promoting running over squishy human bodies with a metal death box.