ATLANTA -- Just about every state has responded to the pickup's rising popularity by requiring adults to wear seat belts in the trucks -- except Georgia.

The fight over seat belts here is a familiar one, waged just about every year in the state Legislature with no resolution. No fewer than three House bills to require seat belts in pickups are now pending, and the Senate has already adopted its own proposal.

But there's hope this year that lawmakers could enact the changes, now that Georgia has emerged as the lone holdout state that does not require adults in pickups to wear seat belts.

There's little doubt that the laws could prevent dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries each year. On a nuts-and-bolts level, they can save millions of dollars in medical costs, not to mention helping secure miillions of federal highway money. The state is not eligible for that money until it enacts the seatbelt requirment for pickups.

There are no known lobbyists lined up against the effort. But attempts to pass tougher seat belt laws here were blocked for years by lawmakers -- particularly those from rural counties -- who said wearing seat belts is a matter of personal freedom.

The latest report on seat belt use by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that seat belts in pickup trucks helped reduce risk of fatal injury by 60 percent, and that about seven in ten people who died in crashes involving pickup trucks were not wearing a seat belt.

In Georgia alone, the American Automobile Association estimates that at least 20 lives could be saved and 400 serious injuries prevented every year if the state required seat belts in pickup trucks.