UniChris

That's indeed a great strategy in many places, but technically not allowed at this T intersection where the choices are only a lane that must turn left, or a lane that must turn right.

You could pull off and push the pedestrian crossing light. But with a traffic light and only one apparent following vehicle, that's the kind of thing that often seems unnecessary.

At this intersection and given visible vehicle behind the best might be be to get to the left of the lane while it is single, and then more gradually merge to towards the left one. As long as you're likely to reach the light while it's still red, you're not really impeding the vehicle behind, and the gradual merge might let the "suprise" vehicle be detected in a mirror in time. There are arguments for making a left turn from the right half of the left turn lane rather than its left half, as if you go all the way to the center you're at some risk of getting clipped by traffic turning into your road while your light is still red, or having a vehicle also turning left try to pass on your right, cutting you off from the part of the destination road you're probably aiming for. And with the right lane already occupied and the light red, you don't have to worry about through traffic blowing by the way you would when waiting for an opening in oncoming traffic to turn left.

That might be part of why one night I watched them use a pavement milling machine to engrave depressions for what were going to be new crosswalk markings. It was actually several days before they came back and filled the depressions with some sort of paint-role substance.

Lots of detectors seem visible in the road surface itself, but have had poor luck getting them to work, mostly it takes car.