Laws of course differ, but I was under the impression that a light can be treated as a stop sign if it is not functioning properly (not changing in a reasonable amount of time).

If it's not working, then yes, everyone is expected to treat it like a stop sign. But I'm talking about lights where they will make you wait BY DESIGN, because they only respond to cars and trucks.

A cyclist isn’t going to trigger a sensor-driven light, and a sensor sensitive enough would be going off all the time, so it makes sense when all is clear to proceed.

Our region has started to put up sensors specifically for cyclists, and they reduce the wait time by a lot. They aren't meant to change the lights 100x a minute, but are meant to make intersections a bit more balanced.

But these are at 0.01% of the intersections in the region, so it means very little to me. It's an expensive project for something that the very free Idaho Stop can solve.

99% of drivers aren’t doing Idaho stops. That implies slowing, looking for traffic, and yielding if there is any. I see a lot of just going through the stop sign or even red light for a turn, half-ass looking as the turn is made, usually with a visible phone in their hand.

LOL. Fair play. I see more stop sign and red light runners in motor vehicles than I do cyclists behaving badly.

I once saw a car make a right turn at a red without even slowing down, nearly hitting a crossing pedestrian (an old man). The driver THEN slowed down, but only to yell at the pedestrian... There's something about being in a metal cage just turns people into lunatics.