What you're demonstrating is a lack of empathy, hence the downvotes.

Look: People gotta get places, even degraded subhumans like pedestrians. (/s, obviously, but that's the message street design conveys.) So, imagine you're walking, and you come to yet anothet intersection with yet another stream of cars in your path. You need a clear path to proceed and not die, so you need to cars to stop, or be absent.

I don't know about you, but I'm not clairvoyant. I can't see the future, or view remote locations. So, if you're like me, you can't cross because of the cars, so you push the button provided by the city to make the cars stop, so that you can move forward and not die.

But, then, and this is where the lack of clairvoyance comes in, there's a gap in traffic that you did not foresee! Now, you face a choice: Cross the street while not under threat of a gruesome death under the wheels of a vehicle, or wait until you have the righteousness of a pictogram of a little, white man to light your path while you walk into the path of a speeding brodozer, hoping the driver stops in time. People with a survival instinct prefer the former.

Or, without the color commentary, humans need to cross the street to get to their destination with minimum delay. Asking them to stop, wait, and do a traffic flow analysis to determine whether they need to push the walk cycle button is unrealistic. They're not actually out to screw you, they push the button so they know that they will eventually get a walk signal, but will go earlier if possible.

It's a rational strategy to deal with a terrible system designed by some of the dimmest people on the planet, i.e. American traffic engineers.

Sorry if I'm getting whooshed, but they don't know that they're going to cross anyways. They'll cross in whichever situation comes first.

I think it would be better if all stop lights were just red by default, and you had to push a button to drive your car across the intersection. Then you won't needlessly inconvenience walkers.