Jenny Harty’s new chapter in her long child safety advocacy campaign
Alpharetta resident Jenny Harty has called herself a mom on a mission since the brush with death her family experienced when a logging truck crashed into them in rural Georgia in 2002. The wreck nearly killed their then-5-year-old daughter, Madison. Harty has since been on a successful crusade to improve Georgia’s booster seat laws, and her latest effort is a new children’s book, “Francie and Fitz — Booster Buddies.”
To understand the book, however, one must know the backstory.
Harty said her family’s decision to place their daughter in a booster seat, even though the state didn’t require it at the time, was crucial to her survival.
“My youngest daughter was riding in a booster seat, and that smart decision saved her life,” Harty told the AJC and 11Alive. Georgia laws 23 years ago required only children ages 4 and younger to use car or booster seats.
So Harty fought to get the state’s minimum age raised to 6 and then, in 2011, up to 8 years. The 2011 law also required children under 57 inches to ride in the backseat.
Harty’s first successful campaign, in 2004, became “Madison’s Booster Seat Law.”
The Georgia Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division spells out the latest requirements and shares federal data, which states that car seats are 71% effective in preventing infant injuries in car crashes and 54% effective in doing the same with passengers 1-4 years old. They also say children in booster seats, which are made for the older children Harty’s law addresses, are 59% less likely to be hurt in wrecks.
Harty and other proponents fought a common refrain that still rings in the Gold Dome: government involvement in a family’s life. “In my opinion,” Harty said, “we’re out protecting children who don’t know any better.”
She became a child passenger safety technician so she could teach people how to properly install seats and explain how the safety components work. “I have not let my certification lapse in all of these years,” Harty said, noting that three of four seats are installed incorrectly.
Harty’s successful child safety advocacy then led her now-employer, law firm Montlick and Associates, to eventually head their iRideSafe child safety campaign. They also asked her to be their director of community relations, tasking Harty with representing them at or helping organize community safety events.
Harty and her team will be with Safe Kids Georgia at 10 a.m. Sept. 27 at Ed Voyles Honda in Marietta. “We’re going to be putting on a free car seat safety check event, so the community can come and have conversations and learn from car seat technicians like myself,” Harty said.
But she also wants to educate kids, a goal that set her on a two year journey to write “Francie & Fitz.” “It ebbed and flowed into a rhyming story of adventure and fun, with a gentle message woven in about booster seat safety for children.”
In the book, Fitz notices his friend Francie has a better vantage point in the car, because she is in a booster seat. So that encourages Fitz to upgrade. Francie also shows Fitz how to properly wear the belt in his new booster seat.
Harty named Fitz after retired Buffalo Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick; she has been a member of Bills Mafia since she was a child. And she worked with illustrator Ellie Beykzadeh to drop other Easter eggs into the book, like pictures of her old dog and her childhood home.
Harty is partnering with various organizations to distribute the book and said they can order it with logos personalized on a page. She simply wants to spread the word — back to that mission of hers.
“(If children) can appreciate and enjoy and see themselves as a Francie and a Fitz, then I think we can change the trajectory of car seat safety and safety in general for children,” Harty said. She is steadfast the story can “save lives, protect dreams and remind us that the best adventures begin with safety.”
She said she also believes that closing the knowledge gap with this book and events like seat checks will show children how important safety is. “If we can educate children early on about best practice and safety and why we do what we do,” Harty said, “they only become better drivers themselves.”
Madison Harty survived a brutal crash, and Jenny Harty clutches that miracle and holds it close. And she continues to pay that blessing forward.
Doug Turnbull covers the traffic/transportation beat for WXIA-TV (11Alive). His reports appear 6-9 a.m. on the 11Alive Morning News and on 11Alive.com. Email Doug at dturnbull@11alive.com.
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