You've heard it before: "Seat belts save lives." But is that true for school buses? Now one year after the Cottonwood, MN bus crash that killed four students, we revisit the issue of seat belts on school buses.

Jim Shafer has been working on issues of bus safety for thirty years. Manager of School Bus Inc. in Sioux Falls. He certainly doesn't like to hear stories like that of the Cottonwood crash, but he still maintains belief in the safety of these big yellow buses.

Jim Shafer says, "The school bus is the only vehicle on the road that's required to meet national crash standards and the buses are tested constantly."

But that's not enough for some parents. We talked to moms at Robert Frost Elementary. They didn't want to talk on camera but they say one of the reasons they pick their kids up after school is because buses don't provide seat belts.

But Jim says statistics show that might not be safe either. Every year an average of 10 children are killed in bus related accidents. But almost 800 children are killed every year while walking, riding bike or going to school in the family car.

Jim Shafer says, "You can make that bus so safe that nobody ever gets killed in it, but now you've made it so expensive nobody's riding in it."

But he says seat belts can still be an option. There are new three point belts that new buses could be installed with, but they're costly. Jim says they would cost $20 thousand to install. That means every new bus would cost more than $100 thousand.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration agrees that buses are still the safest way to travel. But, they've left it up to each state to decide whether seat belts should be mandatory. A couple state legislators in South Dakota say no legislation has been drafted this year to require seatbelts on buses.

Jim says the option to retro-fit old buses with seatbelts isn't available either. The belts on the old buses wouldn't pass the safety requirements expected for road travel.