The penalty for breaking it — up to a year in jail or a $500 fine — was the talk of the day during the storm. But once the ban was lifted, it disappeared from public discussion. I, for one, was left wanting to know more about it.

How many drivers broke the rule? What exactly were they charged with? Will they go to jail? Will their insurance rates go up because they disobeyed the ban?

The Globe reported that many local police departments didn’t enforce the ban because they were too busy dealing with the demands of the storm, so we’ll never know just how many drivers ignored it. But evidence suggests that Governor Deval Patrick’s executive order, the first of its kind in the state since the Blizzard of 1978, was highly effective in keeping people off roads while snowplows and emergency responders did their work.

Over the 24-hour period the ban was in place, on Feb. 8 and 9, State Police cited just five drivers for breaking it, said agency spokesman David Procopio. Troopers also issued “a couple of dozen” warnings to other drivers who were stopped during the ban, he added.

Instances of municipal police officers citing drivers were also rare.

Jack Collins, general counsel for the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, sent an e-mail to its members across the state asking whether their departments cited any violators. As of Tuesday, only chiefs from Martha’s Vineyard and Deerfield reported that they had, Collins said.

More interesting, though, is the continuing confusion about how police were supposed to enforce the ban.

“The governor announced this without telling us about it,” Collins said. “We had a lot of chiefs calling us during the storm: ‘Can we arrest people? Tow their cars? Stop them?’ We learned a lot on the fly.”

Take the matter of arresting violators.

Terrel Harris, spokesman for the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, told me that police had the discretion to arrest ban-breakers on the spot. Procopio, with the State Police, told me that was his impression as well.

“If you have somebody who is violating a state of emergency ban, by definition that has to be a breach of the peace,” said John Sofis Scheft, a lawyer and police instructor who has an Arlington-based consulting business, Law Enforcement Dimensions. “I’m not saying they have to arrest. I’m not even saying they should arrest. But is it arrestable? Of course it is.”

But local police departments were told the opposite, that they could not arrest violators.

The way Collins interpreted the ban, the most an officer could do was write down a violator’s name and address, and file a criminal complaint later in a district court. In the Martha’s Vineyard and Deerfield cases, that’s what was done, Collins said.

Were police allowed to ticket drivers for breaking the ban? Even that basic question remains unclear.

Collins said he was in contact with Kurt Schwartz, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, throughout the blizzard, and was told not to ticket anyone.

“The direction we got from MEMA was clear: no citation could have been issued, no fine issued,” Collins said. “All you could do was file a complaint’' afterward.

From there, it would have been up to a district court official to dismiss the case, assess a fine, or sentence the person to jail time, Collins said.

Lieutenant Mark DeCroteau, with the Melrose Police Department, said one driver was caught breaking the ban on Feb. 9 after he allegedly ran a red light and caused an accident at Upham and Lebanon streets.

The responding officer, unsure about how to handle a driving-ban violation, cited the driver with negligent operation of a motor vehicle.

“I know that when the governor’s office did the announcement, they said there would be a $500 fine. However, in order to charge that individual,’’ DeCroteau said, the officer would have to go to court. In Hanover, police arrested a man for allegedly breaking the driving ban (and other offenses, including operating under the influence) after he nearly crashed into a police cruiser and kept on driving. But he wasn’t issued a ticket for being out during the ban.