Heh. I learned the california hesitation pretty quick. I vaguely recall hearing my driver's ed instructor (back in Canada), mention that you should always double check that the cross traffic is actually stopping, but the why of it is so much more obvious here. What really irks me isn't the folks running the red, but the idiots who think that they're entitled to squeeze four cars through a left turn after the light turns red, even if they hadn't entered the intersection yet (of course, I think this is partly due to the pathetic lack of advance turn signals on traffic lights).