At a guess, these are for pedestrian crossings. The idea is that you come to a stop before the line, then push out to where you can see cross traffic, then go. Shouldn’t cost more than a couple seconds and is way better than charging right up through where pedestrians might reasonably step out before looking both ways.
And yeah, sometimes these are in places where you might not expect pedestrians, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be pedestrians. Especially in the US where infra is terrible. Moreover, these things are often governed by regulations that hold for all intersections rather than having different rules for different roads depending on whether you think pedestrians are likely to be there or not.
In fact, I’d argue that the fact that you don’t expect a pedestrian to be at a certain intersection is a good reason to have more regulations to encourage drivers to watch out for pedestrians, not less.