Stupid traffic light

So what do you do when a traffic light refuses to turn green for you? I'm sure we have all wondered about that, like the question of whether or not you'd go through a red if you were sitting at an intersection in the middle of nowhere. Well the same thing happened to me tonight. I just dropped C off at Oakland Greyhound and was heading back to the freeway, was literally a block from the entrance, but sitting at this light right next to a gas station in the middle of ghetto Oakland. Not my ideal place to sit at a light. After about 3 minutes I realized that the light wasn't going to change. The red walk hand was up on the other way but had never been blinking like it was going to change. People kept coming up behind me but they all turned right so none of them were helping by sitting on the sensors either. I backed up and went to sit in the farthest left hand lane, thinking I could trigger the sensor. Nope! No good. Well shit! What the hell? I don't want to sit here and just keep waiting especially when it's perfectly clear that the light is not working properly. So I looked around for any cops or people, gave the light the bird and made my executive decision to go safely through the red light. I pulled out into the intersection slowly, looked both ways many times and sped across the intersection and prayed that no cops were sitting blocks down and had seen me do this. Of course, I would let them know that the light was broken and I had waited at least 10 minutes but did not feel safe sitting there in a shiny red BMW, which I'm sure can attract the wrong kind of attention. But no cops and I just got back onto the freeway and headed home. It was really weird, because that light has worked before, but it was really slow and retarded and took a bit longer than normal to realize that I was sitting waiting for it to change to green for me. Well at least I don't have to go back there for a while, so that is good. Sheesh!!!