...Pittsburgh drivers :)

So early in the morning when visibility is low and drivers are likely to sleepy (and some may be drunk returning from bars), and Murray himself is likely to be fatigued after a 12 hour drive, he deciders that traffic laws no longer apply to him because, sociology! Wow, what an asshole. I wouldn't ride with him anymore.

Over here the police says you shouldn't stop at a light past midnight because it's dangerous. So what you're supposed to do is just slow down, check if anyone's moving through and then move ahead. Sometimes lights won't even work normally, they'll blink yellow, to let people know lights don't work anymore.

European me, when driving in the USA wondered why the West Coast doesn't have priority loss but only stops and redlights... Even in remote places. O_O'
It looks like this : http://tinyurl.com/kc8x65y
And you don't have to stop if there's no one :)
Also you can have those with redlights and turn the lights off at night when they aren't needed so there's only the priority left.

Taking this one literally, I'd note that the US has been a right-turn-on-red country since 1980 and to my mind has met with limited success. There's about 80 fatalities annually attributed to it. I personally have to brake hard a few times a year as someone sails through without stopping and my wife has been rear-ended twice because she actually comes to a complete stop before turning (socially unacceptable where I live). A friend of mine puts it this way: "New Yorkers just can't handle it."

Americans don't like being told what to do by authority. Its in our DNA, part of our myth. This is ultimately a good thing as the state should serve the individual. When the individual is placed in a subservient position to the state horrors follow.

I like your friend Murray. He will always have a problem knowing where to draw the line, but he lives in a better world than Bruce's father.

In Gainesville, Florida at 0230hrs coming home from work on a very cold morning I was stopped at a light with a pavement sensor. For those that do not know, the trafiic light pavement sensor is triggered by a number of things, that particular one was heat triggered. As noted it was cold, not just cold for Florida, cold, the high 20's with a stiff wind. The light would not change . I was there about three minutes when a GPD car pulled up behind me. I waited another two minutes, I actually looked at my watch, and then drove through the light.
The GPD officer flipped his lights on and pulled me over. Despite his having set there behind me and me explaining the sensor was either not working correctly or it was simply too cold, I got a ticket. Spoiler alert, I was then an assistent superintendent with a giant commerical builder and had previously supervised many highway and street projects with signals so yep, I knew what I was talking about.
Bonus, the light stayed red the whole time the officer and I were engaged!
Rather than pay the fine I went to court and had gotten documentation from the City Street and Signals folks that that specific light had been serviced several times for defective sensor and time issues. The default was supposed to be staying green no longer than 90 seconds.
The charge was dismissed not because of my imformation but because the officer did not appear.
So maybe you can go through the light with no adverse consequences.

This is how pedestrians and cyclists get killed. Drivers flouting the law to keep with the "norms" meanwhile I'm crossing the street and the driver "doesnt see me" as s/he goes through the red light. just because you "look around" doesnt mean you shouldn't stop, use a turn signal, etc. This is how I got hit more than once.

There actually is a rational purpose in waiting for the green even when nobody's around - it's habit-forming. Since we can never judge every situation perfectly (especially in snow, rain, fog, haze of tiredness etc), getting ourselves into the habit where we stop even when we - accurately - don't think we need to means we are less likely to do something dangerous when we - inaccurately - don't think we need to. It's the same reason pilots read checklists out loud rather than mentally, or why we teach children to look both ways even when crossing an empty road.

Sociology be dammned, it's to do with common sense. As the daughter of a self-employed towie let me tell you, if Dad had $1 for every nighttime crash where someone claimed "I looked and there was nothing there! I swear!!" I would have grown up with a bedroom of my own :) You have to be even more vigilant at night because you're more likely to come up against an impaired driver.., plus, as this shows, there is always someone who will claim they don't need to stop because, well, there's nothing there...