Red light cameras don't cost good people money
Red light violation ticket costs are way out of proportion with the potential damage done. For example: I go through about 40 traffic lights as part of my daily commute. If I sneak through only one of them every day, then I could potentially owe about $40,000 in fines each year. I'm certain the safety aspect of a few extra cars going through the end of a red doesn't constitute enough of a safety issue to warrant fines at that level.
People in cars have good intuition of what is right. If a rule is being ignored, then it's probably a bad rule. For example, if a right-turn lane forms on the shoulder of an intersection every day at rush hour, it means another lane is needed, not that an officer should be stationed there to beat the people into submission. If people habitually speed on a section of road, then the speed limit is probably set artificially low. If people in a congested city go at the end of a red, then it's probably best. What they're signaling is that the dead time between the two directions going is too long and their using that time productively.
Also, I assure you that a few extra cars getting through a red light doesn't promote gridlock at the next one. There's really no conceivable scenario where the next light wouldn't have the same capacity as the previous one, or that if there is a lack of capacity then a backup would form and people would eventually not be able to sneak through the red light. In the case of mismatched capacity, the backup is inevitable, so it wouldn't be caused by red light behavior. The state of traffic engineering is pretty dismal.