AUGUSTA, Maine — Governor Mills signed 54 bills into law Friday ranging from establishing a state ballad, to required gun safety courses for hunters.
Included in the new laws are repealing the proficiency-based learning standards for earning a high school diploma, requiring drivers to yield to transit buses, and allowing certain EMS and law enforcement officers to draw blood from a driver involved in a fatal car crash.
The "yield to buses" law is rather specific: drivers must yield if the public way has a speed limit of 35 miles per hour or less, and the transit bus is equipped with a yield sign on the left side of the rear of the transit bus that illuminates to signal the transit bus is reentering the traffic flow.
The "blood draw" law allows emergency medical services personnel or law enforcement officer trained to draw blood samples to draw a specimen of blood from the operator of a motor vehicle involved in a fatal traffic crash in order to determine the blood-alcohol level or the presence of a drug or drug metabolite.
