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MORRISVILLE (AP) — U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters proposed new rules Monday to improve the safety of school bus seats and expand the use of shoulder belts but declined to mandate that all new buses adopt the restraining devices.

Peters rode a school bus to a Morrisville elementary school, then said she wants to increase the height of seat backs on all school buses from 20 inches to 24 inches to help protect children during accidents. She also proposed a new mandate to require short school buses — the style more prone to rollover accidents — to begin using shoulder seat belts.

But Peters didn't see the same need for longer buses, instead proposing to allow states the option of using federal highway safety funds to retrofit its buses with seat belts. She promised no new money to cover those costs.

"We want school districts to make that decision," said Peters, noting that the seat belt buses don't carry as many students. "They'll make the decision about how to protect the most children within their areas."

A new bus with seat belts costs about $10,000 more than one without the devices, said Derek Graham, the section chief for transportation services for North Carolina schools. North Carolina puts about 800 new buses on the road each year, meaning the seat belt buses would cost the state an additional $8 million each year.

Nationwide, school districts run about 474,000 buses, according to the transportation department.

School buses have been increasingly adopting taller seat backs, and Peters said that taller children are prone to flying over the seats if the backs are too short. Peters rode in a packed school bus Monday morning, buckling up in a new bus retrofitted with tall with tall seat backs — so tall that she wasn't able to see over the seat in front of her.

"It's like putting an egg in an egg carton," she told Sarah Omwenga, a 7-year-old who sat next to the secretary on the ride to school.

Wake County, including Morrisville, is one of the first districts in the nation to equip some of its new buses with seat belts.

The proposed rules face a comment period before the Department of Transportation will decide to implement them.

Small buses, which already use lap belts, will have three years to begin equipping new buses with the shoulder style. School districts will have to begin using the taller seat backs one new buses one year after the rules are approved.