Michigan Penal Code Carves Radar Detectors Out of Its Scanner Ban

MCL 750.508 sits in the Michigan Penal Code, not the Vehicle Code, and it is about scanners rather than detectors. Subsection (1) prohibits a person convicted of one or more felonies during the preceding 5 years from carrying or possessing a radio receiving set that will receive signals sent on a frequency assigned by the Federal Communications Commission for police or other law enforcement, fire fighting, emergency medical, federal, state or local corrections, or homeland security purposes. A person licensed as an amateur radio operator by the FCC is outside that ban. Violating it is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 1 year in jail or a fine of up to $1,000.00, or both. Subsection (2) reaches anyone, felony record or not, who carries such a receiver in the commission or attempted commission of a crime: where the underlying offence is a misdemeanor punishable by at least 93 days but less than a year, the scanner charge is a misdemeanor with the same 1 year and $1,000.00 ceiling, and where the underlying offence is punishable by a year or more the scanner charge becomes a felony punishable by up to 2 years or $2,000.00, or both. Subsection (3) then pulls petty offences back out, excluding underlying misdemeanors punishable by less than 93 days.

Subsection (4) is the sentence Michigan drivers actually need, and the Legislature put it in the section catchline as well: "radar detectors not applicable". Nothing in section 508 touches a radar detector, and nothing else in Michigan law does either. Searching the full text of the Michigan Compiled Laws for "radar detector" returns a single section, this one, and the only appearance of the phrase there is the carve-out. Searching for "jammer", "radar jamming" and "speed measuring" returns nothing at all, so Michigan has also never legislated on devices that interfere with police speed equipment, and it has no statute making a detector inadmissible, confiscable or an aggravating factor at sentencing for speeding.

Michigan's newest speed camera scheme is worth knowing about precisely because a detector cannot see it. MCL 257.2c, added by 2024 PA 164 and effective April 2, 2025, defines an automated speed enforcement system as an electronic traffic sensor that detects speeding using a lidar system or another technology that must not be a radar system and must not be less capable than lidar. MCL 257.627c then lets the Michigan Department of Transportation install those systems only in work zones that are not separated from traffic by concrete barriers, on roads under its own jurisdiction, with a sign posted 1 mile before the zone and a digital speed display at the camera. No more than 4 systems may operate at once within an MDOT region office's jurisdiction, and a system may be active only while workers are present. A recorded image counts only where a driver exceeds the posted limit by 10 miles per hour or more, a first violation draws a written warning, a second within 3 years a civil fine of not more than $150.00, and a third or subsequent within 3 years not more than $300.00. Because the statute expressly excludes radar, a radar detector gives no warning of these cameras at all.

Commercial drivers are the group Michigan does restrict. MCL 480.11a(1)(b), part of the Motor Carrier Safety Act of 1963, adopts the federal motor carrier safety regulations at 49 CFR parts 390 through 393 as state law, substituting the Department of State Police for the federal agency names and reading "interstate" as intrastate or interstate. That sweeps in 49 CFR 392.71, which provides that no driver shall use a radar detector in a commercial motor vehicle, or operate a commercial motor vehicle that is equipped with or contains any radar detector, and that no motor carrier shall require or permit a driver to violate that rule. The prohibition covers mere presence in the cab, not just use, so a detector sitting unplugged in a sleeper berth still violates it.

One Michigan rule does still govern where the detector goes. MCL 257.709(1)(c) prohibits operating a motor vehicle with an object that obstructs the vision of the driver except as authorized by law, so a detector suction-cupped into the middle of the windshield can draw an equipment citation even though the device itself is lawful. Mounting it low on the windshield or on the dashboard, clear of the airbag deployment area, keeps it outside that provision.

508(4) removes radar detectors from the only Michigan section that regulates receivers of this kind. In a commercial motor vehicle the picture reverses. 00 for each violation. 17(2) lets a peace officer or an enforcement member of the Michigan State Police motor carrier division stop and inspect a vehicle on probable cause to believe it is being operated in violation of the act, and issue a notice to appear. 00 where the receiver is carried during the commission of an offence punishable by a year or more. 907(2)(a).