Hawthorne effect and traffic lights.

I walk a great deal (no driver's licence, thanks to an insurance dispute, but that's a story for another time) , and it gives me time to observe traffic without having to actually deal with it as a vehicle controller.
A while back (several years by my guess) all the traffic signals in town were put on a delayed-green status. This means, as it says, that there is a pause between the occurrence of a red stop light, and the following green for traffic going crossways through the intersection.
The concept is that it will lessen traffic accidents by allowing those drivers needing to proceed through the intersection on a warning yellow to clear the intersection before the onset of the subsequent green. Nice concept. EXCEPT.
Evidently nobody among these traffic designers ever heard of the *Hawthorne effect. And it is taking hold in a big way here. It is rare when I approach an intersection and do not see at least one vehicle going through on the red. Sometimes several.
People just aren't that stupid. They know the green is delayed. So they know they can go through on the red.And it's happening all the time now. After all, their needs are much more important than any silly traffic law or even their own safety. Besides, they know it's safe. Yeah. Right.
I wonder if there are any statistics showing the numbers of accidents occurring at intersections where this procedure has been in place for a while. I doubt that safety has been improved. Personally I suspect that accidents, when they happen, occur at higher speeds than before, since all the drivers are now "beating the light" with their accelerators at the max. Perhaps now we should institute a "no stop lights" concept. That would improve things too. For a while.
* Named after the General Electric Hawthorne Plant where the first studies were done - basically it says that when changes are made, things get better for a while, then revert back to the previous situation.