The yellow light means "Clear the intersection," not "Slow down." The purpose is to give time to people crossing the sidewalks to finish walking over to the other side. Shortening them is a safety hazard for pedestrians like me who don't own a vehicle.
I don't live in Florida, but this is shameful and disgusting.
This obviously only applies where pedestrian signage exists.
Then, there's also the issue that many pedestrians are still in the process of crossing when the hand turns red.
I'm sorry, but this sentence doesn't make sense to me. Did you mean:
> the traffic lights turn yellow even when the "do-not-cross" signal is still flashing
If not, could you explain? If so, where do you live that the lights do this? I've never seen that behavior (although I'm the first to say I haven't lived many places).
Here in Toronto, we have an additional two seconds of "all red" light after any yellow lights, to give time for left-turning vehicles to finish their turn.
The decision was made for poor reasons. There's nothing preventing them from making the same decision for the same reasons again, effectively increasing the reduction of time. It's important to call out poor behavior in government lest, even if it's slight, lest it become institutionalized and then exacerbated.
Shortening it makes it dangerous for a lot of parties.