Dearborn Heights, MI Public Conduct: Jaywalking (2026)

Dearborn Heights City Code § 32-499 and § 32-500 sit back to back in Division 7 of the Uniform Traffic Code, the division covering pedestrians' rights and duties, right after the section on crossing a roadway at right angles to the curb. Section 32-499 addresses the classic mid-block jaywalk: once traffic-control signals are operating on a street, a pedestrian cannot cross the roadway anywhere except within a marked crosswalk, meaning crossing between two signalized intersections instead of walking to the corner is the violation the section targets.

Section 32-500 goes further for a business district, requiring a pedestrian to use a crosswalk to cross the roadway there at all, regardless of whether traffic signals happen to be operating at that moment, which makes the business-district rule broader than the signal-dependent rule in section 32-499. Both sections work alongside the rest of Division 7: section 32-495 already requires any crossing outside a marked crosswalk to be by a route at right angles to the curb, and section 32-496 requires a pedestrian crossing outside a marked crosswalk at an intersection to yield the right-of-way to all vehicles on the roadway, so a pedestrian who crosses mid-block even where it is technically allowed still has to yield to traffic and cross at right angles.

Both section 32-499 and section 32-500 make their own violation a civil infraction rather than a misdemeanor, so a Dearborn Heights police officer issuing a citation for jaywalking under either section is issuing a civil-infraction ticket, not a criminal charge, and section 32-577(a) confirms that a civil infraction of this kind is not punishable by imprisonment or a penal fine.