COLUMBIA--A primary seat-belt bill speeding through the General Assembly appears headed on a collision course with Gov. Mark Sanford's veto pen -- and lawmakers say they're ready to play chicken.

While he did not utter the V-word, Sanford said Thursday he definitely would not support the bill passed early this legislative session by the Senate, should it make it to his desk. At the same time, the governor has been lobbying House members, who take up the measure next week, to change the bill to make the question of whether someone hurt in a car crash used their seat belt admissible in court.

"There have been preliminary conversations, and I think they are receptive to these ideas," Sanford said. "The administration is sayingthat anytime you have a chance to empower people to make changes that can better their lives, you have to consider many factors."

Sanford says a $12 fine proposed in the current legislation is not much of a deterrent, but making seat-belt use admissible as evidence in trial could be. Such a change could cost accident victims damages in civil lawsuits, and that could prompt drivers to rethink the idea of staying unbuckled.

A primary seat-belt law, which would allow police to stop any motorist they suspect is not buckled up, has long been considered an inevitability in South Carolina. The House passed the measure last year, but it was killed in the Senate.

State Rep. Ronald Townsend, chairman of the House Education and Public Works Committee, said the changes the governor wants are unlikely to be made in his committee.

"I don't think we'll get into that," said Townsend, R-Anderson. "That sounds like it should be part of tort reform. That's the most likely place for that. If someone can get it amended on the floor, so be it, but I don't think the committee is going to do that."

State Sen. Greg Ryberg, R-Aiken, agreed that the question of admissibility belongs in the wider tort reform debate.

Townsend said the governor's office is invited to make its case in subcommittee, but the threat of veto will not have any effect. "We'll just take our chances with it," Townsend said.

Townsend said he suspects the House could muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override a veto. That prospect is much less clear in the Senate, where all this controversy began a year ago.

Last year, Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell single-handedly held up the seat-belt legislation passed by the House. McConnell said it was a bad bill that would allow police to profile drivers, stopping them under the guise of checking seat-belt use, or even lead to seat-belt roadblocks or checkpoints.

This year, McConnell offered an amendment to the bill to make seat-belt use admissible in court, as Sanford wants. That amendment was summarily rejected by the Senate.

McConnell said the suggestion was not an attempt to kill the measure -- although he had those sorts of amendments, too -- but simply a common-sense one: Violating the law is, in legal terms, negligence per se. That could have a legal bearing on any lawsuits concerning automobile accidents.

The fact that McConnell's admissibility amendment was killed could spell trouble for the seat-belt bill. Although the legislation had majority support in the Senate, it's unclear whether there are enough votes to override a veto.

There's also no guarantee the legislation would pass the General Assembly under Sanford's terms.

"There are some Libertarian-leaning senators who oppose any sort of 'criminalization' of wearing seat belts," McConnell said. "If you throw this in there, you start to complicate the vote."

Sanford said the government's role in the seat-belt debate should be about encouraging "prudent personal actions," not criminalizing poor individual choices. The legislation apparently headed for approval does nothing but cost drivers $12 for not wearing a seat belt. Violations don't go on a driver's record.

Lawmakers say they probably are unwilling to go much further. House Speaker David Wilkins said Thursday that the court admissibility issue is not a new one to the seat-belt debate. A similar amendment was proposed last year, but the House was against it. Wilkins said he suspects little has changed.

"The House is committed to passing seat-belt legislation," said Wilkins, R-Greenville. "My guess is it will look like the bill that we passed last year. What happens after that, we'll have to wait and see."