For years, it's been a major, and unsuccessful, fight at the Statehouse. Highway safety advocates want a primary enforcement seat belt bill, which allows police and troopers to stop someone simply for not being buckled up.

Right now, the state has secondary enforcement, which means police can issue a ticket to someone breaking the seat belt law only if they pull them over for another violation first.

The South Carolina House on Wednesday passed a primary enforcement seat belt bill. The Senate has already passed the bill, but the House made some changes, so the bill will have to go back to the Senate to see if senators will go along with those amendments.

The bill seemed to have little chance of passage earlier in the year. The Senate passed the bill, which was a surprise in itself because senators had for years refused to pass it. It was thought that the House would then go along, because it had passed the bill several times before.

But House members sent the bill back to committee, which is often the end of a bill. It came back up for debate on the House floor Wednesday, and this time, it passed 81-34.

One of the reasons for its success this time was that members of the Legislative Black Caucus had their concerns addressed, so they supported the bill. Members didn't like the bill originally because they worried that police could use it for racial profiling, pulling over drivers based only on their race.

Rep. Joe Neal, D-Hopkins, says, "It has happened to me. And it's not a good feeling when you know you're not speeding, you're not breaking the law, but you're pulled over anyway." 

So the bill was amended to require police to keep track of the race and sex of the drivers they pull over. It's something the Highway Patrol has been doing for years.

Lance Corporal Josef Robinson of the Highway Patrol says, "It is a good safeguard there for officers, you know, in case one is accused of it he can go back and look at his record and show that this officer is doing the same thing everywhere. It's a level playing field."

Debate on the House floor centered on the bill's likelihood of saving lives, because it would encourage more people to buckle up. South Carolina has one of the lowest seat belt usage rates in the nation, and also one of the highest highway death rates.

But opponents say allowing police to pull over someone simply for not wearing a seat belt infringes on freedom. Rep. Jim Merrill, R-Daniel Island, argued on the House floor, "We can't give away the freedoms, the rights that we have, bit by bit, incremental portion by incremental portion. And that is what this is doing. It's a little $25 fine, but let me tell you, people are going to be pulling our people, they're going to be stopping 'em, and they're not going to like it! They're not going to like it!"