A red light turned green on Wade Avenue. A police car rolled toward Ring in slow motion, its blue lights blinking.

Following in stately formation were a white hearse and a line of cars with headlights blazing and ... oh! she realized, it was a funeral procession!

Ring stepped lightly on the gas, but the driver beside her at the green light did not budge. And she didn't get far herself.

Cars were stopped in both lanes ahead, with their amber hazard flashers on. All westbound movement on Wade Avenue was frozen until the last of the mourners passed by, heading east.

Ring, 53, has been living and driving in Cary since she was a teenager. But this was a new experience.

As the only driver who had attempted to move while the funeral cortege rolled down Wade Avenue, she worried that she had broken a law "or at least committed a horrible faux pas," she said.

"I thought, 'Oh my goodness, was I supposed to stop?' After all these years living in North Carolina, I had never noticed people stopping for an oncoming funeral procession. I had passed funerals before, and everybody just passed on by," Ring said.

She went home and consulted her state Division of Motor Vehicles driver handbook. She discovered that it's OK to stop your car for a funeral procession -- but it is not OK to stop traffic.

North Carolina traffic laws recognize that some drivers want to show their respect for the dead. But life and traffic must go on.

According to state law and the DMV handbook:

A driver who sees an approaching funeral procession may choose to slow or stop until the mourners have moved on.

But a driver who stops must pull completely off the roadway, so other drivers can still get by without having to change lanes.

"It's always been just a courtesy, not the law," said Lt. Everett Clendenin, a Highway Patrol spokesman.

While respect for the dead is optional, some things about funeral processions are not.

The lead vehicle -- hearse, police escort or individual -- must observe traffic laws and wait for red lights to turn green. Other cars in the funeral procession (with headlights and flashers on) are allowed to keep moving when the light turns red -- as long as each driver is careful to avoid other vehicles or pedestrians.

A driver who has a green light must yield to a funeral procession crossing the intersection against a red light.

Other drivers should not knowingly drive between cars in a funeral procession. Drivers traveling in the same direction are not allowed to pass where there is just one lane in each direction, but they can pass on multiple-lane roads.

So the respectful folks who blocked Wade Avenue for a few moments were not strictly abiding by the law. They were observing a social custom that is probably more common in smaller towns, Clendenin said, where the living move at a slower pace.

Alex Lee, a 40-year veteran of the funeral industry, agreed.

"The farther you get out in the rural areas, the more you will see people pull over, and almost everybody will stop" for a funeral procession, said Lee, president of Bryan-Lee Funeral Home, based in Garner.

"If you see one, I feel like it's good to pull over and let it pass. Everybody's in a hurry this day and time, and they don't have time to pull over for a funeral procession. But some day they may appreciate it, for their own family."

You can read up on the legal niceties of funeral processions online at www.ncdot.gov/dmv/. Look under "Driver Services" for the driver's handbook. Or pick up a copy at your local DMV office.