By VT terminal driver, do you mean the disconnectable terminal driver that can optionally be enabled?
I have that enabled and I am not seeing any issues with extra carriage return characters being input with programs that use SMG or other programs.
If you mean VT terminals, or ANSI compatible, and the standard actually has a new name that I can not remember at the moment, then that is just the standard terminal driver.
Most terminals and terminal emulators can be configured to add a carriage return to the output when they receive a line feed. VMS (and Linux by default) do not want that option enabled as it will cause the symptoms that you describe.
That option is off by default on most modern terminal emulators, it is mainly used on half/duplex connections.