[blntechie]

Timers are very common in Asia. But the countdown timers for Green to Yellow could be dangerous as most people seeing the timer about to be zero from far and speeds up instead of slowing down. Recently many of the traffic signals in my city have removed countdown timers for Green to Yellow and has kept timer only for Red to Green change.

[iggldiggl]

Long-duration timers are also incompatible with fully traffic-actuated signals and/or public transport priority, because both of those mean that the actual phase sequence that's going to happen can be determined only a few seconds (if even that) in advance. Those kinds of timers you mention in Asia on the other hand require that the phase sequence get fixed at least one signal cycle in advance (i.e. on the order of one or multiple minutes), which is much too long for full traffic actuation and/or public transport priority.