Red light? What´s that?

I was in a taxi (NOT Taxi Seguro!) going to my tutoring job yesterday, when we came to a 3-way intersection. We needed to turn left; there are two lanes that turn left and then quickly merge into one lane. The light was red and there was a truck in the far left lane, and two cars in the second turn lane. My taxi pulled up behind the truck. After waiting for about 1 minute, my taxi driver turned the wheel and started moving to the right. I thought he was going to pull behind the two cars because perhaps he thought they would move faster than the one truck when the light turned green (which is usually true). However, instead of staying behind the two cars, he continued moving to the right and made his own turn lane! Then, he slowly inched into the intersection (our light was still red) and when no cars were coming, he turned left! All I could do was laugh and wonder if any other cars would follow us.