I'm curious, are there a lot of roads out there that have heavy auto traffic two directions and virtually none from the other directions so that this is a problem?
Usually all four directions are either active or dead so worrying about the actuator is not a problem. I.e. you simply stop, look, and go.
I have seen turn lanes that never actuate and you can easily skip a cycle or two, but then it's easy enough to do a straight-across, then turn at the corner as a work around.