Dearborn Heights, MI Public Conduct: Skateboarding Rules (2026)

Dearborn Heights City Code § 32-216 sits in the Uniform Traffic Code's Division 3 on obedience to traffic regulations, and it treats roller skates, coasters, toy vehicles, and 'similar devices' the same way for street-safety purposes, a category broad enough to reach skateboards, scooters, and inline skates. The rule is a flat roadway ban: a person on any of these devices cannot go onto a roadway at all, with one narrow exception for crossing at a marked crosswalk, where the rider is treated exactly like a pedestrian, gaining the right-of-way protections of section 32-492 and the duties of section 32-496, which requires a pedestrian crossing outside a marked crosswalk to yield to vehicles.

Riding along the street itself, weaving between parked cars, or using the roadway as a travel lane rather than a sidewalk or path is what section 32-216 targets; the sidewalk and any designated bicycle path remain the places these devices belong. Violating the section is a civil infraction rather than a misdemeanor, and section 32-577(a) specifies that a civil infraction under the Uniform Traffic Code is not punishable by imprisonment or a penal fine, distinguishing it from the misdemeanor penalty, up to a $100 fine or ninety days in jail, that section 32-577(b) sets for other traffic offenses in the same chapter.

Crossing mid-block instead of at a marked crosswalk gets no pedestrian-equivalent protection under section 32-216 and can separately run into the mid-block crossing restriction at section 32-499.