So red means... stop?

I went hiking at the Delaware Water Gap on Sunday with my friend Becky (not you), and as we approached the hiking area, we hit a stoplight. This was a strange stoplight in that there was no cross traffic and no potential for cross traffic. So after waiting for about 30 seconds, Becky decided it was clearly an irrelevant stoplight and preceded through it.

We were winding through a narrow one-way road flanked by a mountain wall on our right and a cliff on our left. About a minute into the journey, we figured out what that stoplight was for.

A line of cars came flying toward us from the opposite direction. Becky managed to find a small shoulder to pull onto, and the other people who had obeyed the law by waiting for the stoplight on their side were just barely able to squeeze by us -- although we got glared at by five consecutive very annoyed drivers.

The dude driving the lead car opened his window and explained to us that the purpose of that light was to manage the traffic so that cars could only go in one direction at a time, since the road was too narrow to accommodate two-way traffic.

Sure enough, as we were leaving we noticed the sign right next to the light we ran: "Long three-minute light to control one-way traffic".

Good thing we're so observant, being reporters and all...