Today's topic comes from deep in the Traffic Talk "urban legends" file, which is housed in a nondescript grain silo somewhere in rural Michigan, and is lorded over by a solitary, chain-smoking man of mysterious origins and dubious intentions who...uh, I've said to much.

Let me start over. This week's question is not from a direct Traffic Talk email -- which saves my intern the trouble of navigating my byzantine archives -- but, rather, comes from the Facebook page for the Grand Rapids Police Department.

Last year, a woman named Ashley posted the following question on the page: "Dear Officers, Is it illegal to drive with my dome light on? So when my husband is driving I could possibly read a book or something?"

I'll try to resist making this column an extended plug for the merits of audiobooks. But it's a good question, with, in classic Traffic Talk fashion, an unclear answer.

Based on what I found through some intrepid Googling, it seems as if wherever the dome light question pops up -- California, Wisconsin, Washington, etc. -- the answer is generally the same: It's not illegal, but driving at night with an interior light on besides your dimly luminous vehicle controls and meters is not a great idea.

Our expert source with the Michigan State Police Traffic Services Section, Sgt. Jill Bennett, said, "Michigan law does not specifically say that you cannot have it on."

Determining the legality of dome light use, then, is a matter of interpreting indirect references to vehicle lighting. The most relevant section of law for this question, Bennett said, is the part of the Michigan Vehicle Code addressing external lights on vehicles, simply because there is not much in the law one way or another addressing interior lights. Part of this section reads:

About that last part: Assuming you are not in the mood to spend an unrecoverable hour of your life wading through insanely detailed federal code -- which makes state code look like Dr. Seuss -- just take my word that 49 C.F.R. 571.108 deals with lamps and reflective devices and does not make the dome light question any easier to answer.

Bennett clarifies: "A dome light is not required vehicle equipment and is not expressly permitted in the Michigan Vehicle Code. It may be a distraction/vision obstruction for the driver. This will be left open to local interpretation."

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We pause here for our regular disclaimer that there could be as many hypothetical interpretations of the Michigan Vehicle Code as there are jurisdictions, judges and enforcing officers. So if an officer wants to argue that a dome light violates the law against in-vehicle visual obstructions that an earlier Traffic Talk column addressed, they're every bit as authorized to do so as a judge is authorized to throw out the ticket for being ridiculous. Hypothetically.

Speaking of local interpretation, here is how the Grand Rapids Police officer who was moderating the Facebook page responded to Ashley's question:

I would mention audiobooks again, but if the person driving is less interested in, say, "Game of Thrones" than you are, a small book light might be the way to go. Dome lights undeniably make it harder for the driver to see what's going on outside the vehicle at night, even if, as distractions go, they're a few orders of magnitude below cell phones. As such, the recent Governers Highway Safety Association study on distracted driving and subsequent MLive investigative series on the subject make no mention of dome lights, as talking/texting while driving is a much bigger fish to fry. This leads me to suspect it has not been thoroughly studied.

There is, however, at least one circumstance in which police suggest you turn on the dome light -- when you've been pulled over at night.

Getting back to the "unless both covered and unlit" section of the MVC, Bennett also said this law has been interpreted to disallow things such as "valve stem lights, registration plate cover lighting and windshield wiper lights, or colors other than those specifically mentioned (white and amber to the front, red and amber to the rear)." This subject is addressed on the MSP's FAQ page.

This also applies to neon, both interior and exterior. If you're a traffic geek, you may get a chuckle reading this opinion from 1995, in which then Michigan Attorney General Frank J. Kelley, toward the end of his epic tenure as the longest-serving state AG in U.S. history, wrestles with the concept of neon-tube lighting determines it is not allowable under the law.

Which was, of course, bad news for motorists who rely on neon to attract mates.

Got a question about Michigan traffic laws or myths of the road? Post a comment or email treimink@mlive.com with "Traffic Talk" in the subject line.