Rules of the Road

I still haven't driven in Cuenca. I will, eventually. I have my international driver's license and we have found a few places for me to practice (we have a 35 year old manual truck, that is a bit, um, heavy, to drive). The thing that has actually been holding me back the most is trying to understand the rules of the road here. A few examples...

No Turn on Red?
Here in Ecuador, you are not allowed to turn right on red (like in the US, the driver is on the left hand side of the car and the traffic drives on the right). However, it is quite common to see people turning left on red. It seems perfectly acceptable to turn left on red while the cross street is green, even if there are come cars coming.

Crossing the Street
Over the past year, the former mayor had installed new traffic lights and crossing signals in the center of town. All the streets there are one way. With these new lights I have observed something strange - people tend to cross the street when the traffic light and crossing signal is red, not green. It's like the people wait until the light turns red to cross the street. Maybe it's because drivers here believe they always have the right of way, thus do not slow down (while turning) for pedestrians on the crosswalk.

Green Means Go, Yellow Means Slow, and Red Means Stop
In our neighborhood there is a stoplight that doesn't have a yellow. It goes from green to red immediately. It was not always like this, I think while programming other lights over the past few weeks, someone made a mistake. But as dangerous as this seems, it really isn't, because people here tend to accelerate on the yellow, and going from green to red actually causes people to slow down and stop. But, that's not always the case, lots of drivers don't seem to want to break on yellow even when they are still a few hundred feet from the light, so they speed up then honk the horn to let other drivers know that they will be zooming through the red light.