I replied by telling her that I had worked for a company which manufactured school buses and if school districts wanted seat belts installed, all they had to do was order them, because the Company was glad to install them because, quite simply, that generated more income for the Company.
I mentioned that the state with the strictest standards for school buses was Kentucky. You might wonder, as I did, why would Kentucky be so strict about their buses? In the 1990s there was an horrific school bus accident in Kentucky when a bus went over a cliff and killed all the children. After that, seat belts became mandatory in school buses.
A delegation would come from Kentucky to observe their vehicles were being built. They were free to roam the plant, talk to employees, and inspect our methods and procedures. That, of course, would be a very pressure-filled time, with the customers able to watch every action. I didn't have any fear because I knew what my employees did every day and I always followed my mother's saying, "We do the right thing because it's the right thing to do."
I must admit that we were shamelessly sycophantic when we knew that the Kentucky customers were scheduled to be in our plant. Because we were a Deming-style plant, all employees wore uniforms, but when we knew that Kentucky customers would be coming, there were many people wearing Kentucky Wildcats tee-shirts!
One wonders why school buses would be built without seat belts. Read the article Why Don't Buses Have Seatbelts? which was published in the trade periodical Public Transport.
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