Oklahoma One Of Many States Not Requiring Seat Belts On School Buses

Twelve children are in the hospital, six are in critical condition, after riding on a Chattanooga, Tennessee school bus that crashed Monday.

A kindergartener, first grader and three fourth graders died when the bus flipped onto its side and wrapped a tree.

Police arrested the 24-year-old driver on five counts of vehicular manslaughter; officers say he was going well over the speed limit.

11/22/2016 Related Story: Driver Arrested After Tennessee School Bus Crash Kills Several Children

Federal investigators are reviewing video from two cameras on the bus as well as mechanical records and witness interviews to try and say for certain what happened.

The deadly accident has Oklahoma districts reassuring parents their children are safe while on the bus.

But, while the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommends seat belts on all school buses, only six states require them - Oklahoma is not one of them.

Leaders at Tulsa Public Schools say their decision to not require seat belts has to with how the buses are engineered to handle an accident.

School buses are some of the biggest vehicles on the road, carrying some of our most precious cargo.

"Safety is first and foremost when it comes to transporting students," said TPS Chief Operations Officer Blaine Young.

With over 160 active buses in TPS, there are a lot of routes and drivers.

Young said TPS drivers go through safety training, on-going professional development, as well as safety procedures before and after their daily routes.

"We're transporting children, so safety is stressed every day with our drivers," he said.

But what is safe on the bus is up for debate.

The head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates four students die each year from bus accidents - a number he thinks could be cut in half if all buses had three-point seat belts.

"We're looking at everything from research to funding to figure out how to help everybody nationwide get their kids even safer," Mark Rosekind said.

At TPS, special needs buses come with seat belts, but Young said research is still determining if all buses need them.

"The pros and cons of seat belts versus the way the buses are built for safety for the kids should there be a collision, and are they safer with them or without them," he said.

All TPS buses come with multiple cameras onboard for safety, but TPS buses do not come equipped with seat belts.

Young said, "For you and I who drive an automobile, we know the importance of seat belts, but it's a total different engineering that goes into how the compartment of a bus is built."

There is no federal mandate requiring school buses to have seat belts.

NHTSA estimates it would cost nearly $5 billion to retrofit the nearly 500,000 buses nationwide with seat belts.