If there was a sincere interest in red light saftey, they would just put a 1.5-2 sec delay from the red one way to the green the other. Some jurisdictions do exactly that.

Not really, because the 1.5-2 seconds would effectively become part of the "green light." Human nature dictates that people are going to run the light as long as they're assured there's nobody coming the other way. If you made it 20 seconds between changes, people would run the red light for 18 or 19 seconds.

For the record, when I drive in certain parts of Philadelphia, I slow down at every GREEN light.