Read the Episode Transcript
| 00:05 | ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Lawyers in the House. With Montlick. Wish you had a lawyer in the family? Now you do. Here’s your host. Veronica Waters.
VERONICA: Welcome to Lawyers in the House with Montlick and with me, your host, Veronica Waters here on WSB. We have opened up the House to some very exciting guests today to talk about protecting tiny treasures on trips. |
| 00:34 | VERONICA: They have wiped their feet and made themselves comfortable. So allow me to introduce you without further ado… first say hello to Jenny Harty, Lisa Crossman and Meaghan Gibson. Now let’s start with Jenny Harty, a familiar face to fans of Lawyers in the House. Jen is the director of iRideSafe, which is one of Montlick Injury Attorneys’ many public service programs. Its purpose is to kind of, well, you know, it’s in the name to help us ride safely from place to place. |
| 01:05 | VERONICA: It’s a resource for drivers and passengers. Jenny, tell us a little bit about the mission of iRideSafe.
JENNY: So thank you for having us here today. VERONICA: Always love to have you in the house. JENNY: Yes, we love to be here. It’s great. So the mission of iRideSafe is simply to help Georgia drivers do just that. It’s to ride safe and to make sure that people get home safely. We want the mamas to be able to tuck their babies in bed at night. |
| 01:36 | JENNY: And for spouses to make sure that their spouses come home at night. And for parents and loved ones just to all be able to get home safely. And the mission is to provide resources and guides that can be found on the website at iRideSafe.com as far as safe driving practices. |
| 01:59 | JENNY: And it’s chock full of videos and guides and downloadable services that will help be a resource for families and caregivers to get home safe.
VERONICA: I love that. And as you mentioned, there are a lot of downloads on there. I actually visited the site, and there is so much information there. I did not recall, though, seeing something which is very interesting about you, which is the fact that one of Georgia’s laws is named after your daughter. |
| 02:34 | JENNY: That’s correct. Georgia’s booster seat law was dubbed Madison’s booster seat law after the living proof that my daughter is that a booster seat saved her life after our family was involved in a violent car crash.
VERONICA: And that spurred you to what has become a brand-new career. It’s not brand new at this point because it’s been a couple of decades, but it spurred you into a completely different path of your life. |
| 03:01 | JENNY: It did change the trajectory of my life indeed. I realized early on how close we came to losing our daughter and that -$15 at that time- that $15 booster seat saved our daughter’s life. And I never wanted to see any other parent come as close or even lose their child’s life if I could do something to prevent that. |
| 03:31 | JENNY: And it truly became my life’s mission and purpose to do what I could to save lives in Georgia.
VERONICA: I am sure countless parents thank you for that. How would we have ended up with this law had you not gotten on that sort of warpath, you know, to make kids safe? I mean, how long might it have taken us? So kudos to you, Jenny Harty. And next to Jenny to her right is Meaghan Gibson, who is a program specialist with a Child Occupant Safety Project at the Georgia Department of Health. Welcome, Meaghan. |
| 04:04 | MEAGHAN: Hi. Thank you for having me.
VERONICA: Absolutely glad to have you in the house. Tell me a little bit about what it is you do. That’s a very long title. MEAGHAN: So anything and everything related to child passenger safety. Our particular program, the Child Occupant Safety Project, we try to tailor education to the environment wherever we are. So we do work a lot with parents and caregivers. But we also do a lot of education in hospitals. We do education with first responders, police, firefighters, because child passenger safety has many different components. |
| 04:37 | MEAGHAN: A lot of them are educational, of course, but we try to provide hands on practice. We try to expose folks to new information, but essentially anything and everything child passenger safety related. If you have a question about using car seats on ambulances, because we do have a lot of questions from first responders about that, we provide information and trainings. And all of the trainings that we offer are free to partners. So we really just try to get out there and provide as much education and resources and in-person or virtual or whatever assistance is needed. |
| 05:09 | VERONICA: I love that. And can you just tell me what launched you into that path?
MEAGHAN: You’re going to laugh really hard at this. I work in injury prevention entirely by accident. I… actually, that was how I met Lisa. I volunteered at an event with Safe Kids Cobb, gosh, probably back in 2008. And they needed somebody to interpret. So I was still gaining my Spanish fluency skills. |
| 05:36 | MEAGHAN: And I went and participated in a seat check event, and they said, would you like to become a technician? So I became a child passenger safety technician in 2009. And I worked with Cobb & Douglas Public Health through 2014, I think. In that time, I expanded my skill set. I became an instructor, and I have made a career out of injury prevention. So when I tell people that I work with car seats, they’re like, you can do that for a living? |
| 06:04 | MEAGHAN: And the answer is yes, because unfortunately with injury prevention, people are very good at injuring themselves. So we work real hard to try to mitigate or eliminate those risks.
VERONICA: I love it. Excelente. And I guess that our guests know… our listeners know what we’re talking about today. You are hearing it in these introductions. And to Meaghan’s right is Lisa Crossman. Welcome Lisa. She’s the deputy director of Cobb & Douglas Public Health. She’s also chair of the Cobb County Safety Village Foundation. |
| 06:35 | VERONICA: And I think you joked earlier that Meaghan’s business card is bigger than yours, but now hearing it out loud, I think you might have the larger card. Now give us a little bit of information about what it is you do.
LISA: So as deputy director for Cobb & Douglas Public Health, I think that the “other duties as assigned” frequently reflects what I do, but I would say generally my focus is bringing partners and resources to the table for our public health missions and messages. And also being able to work out in the community. |
| 07:06 | LISA: So a lot of our community health areas like home visiting and our WIC program are all under my direction.
VERONICA: That’s incredible. The Cobb County Safety Village Foundation, I’m sure we’re going to talk a little bit more about the Safety Village, right? I am curious, though, to know if you will allow me to ask you like I did, Jenny and Meaghan. What was the trajectory that landed you in public health? |
| 07:32 | LISA: So my entire career before public health was in rehabilitation and sports medicine, cardiac rehabilitation. I worked for hospitals in Florida and Georgia. And about 30 years ago, the public health director at the time in Cobb County said, let’s work on this Safe Kids coalition idea. And so I found that although I really believed and loved the stage in my life that was in rehabilitation, my heart was really in preventing injuries and illness. |
| 08:07 | LISA: And so at that time, I kind of just jumped in- all in about how to help people prevent illnesses and injuries. My dad had a stroke, very serious stroke when I was about ten, and that’s how I got into the rehabilitation angle of it. And then I thought, you know, let’s figure out how to help families not go through the rehab pain and trauma. Let’s help them prevent illnesses and injury.
VERONICA: I love it. LISA: That’s how I got into it. VERONICA: I am so looking forward to learning from all of you. So Lisa, Meaghan and Jenny, thank you so much for being in the House. |
| 08:38 | VERONICA: The topic is child passenger safety today. And while it is a simple goal, it seems that there is a lot more involved than just saying buckle up, right? Back to you, some of the stuff that Lisa was just talking about seems to really go hand in hand with Montlick’s missions in general. It’s a personal injury firm, yes, that represents people when they’re hurt through no fault of their own, but also Montlick Injury Attorneys spends a lot of time trying to help prevent injury as well. |
| 09:09 | JENNY: Yes. So we see all the time how families are injured, and we see the devastating effects that injuries and car crashes have on families and individuals. And it is in our DNA to do what we can to prevent them from ever happening. Which is why we are so committed to preventing them from ever happening in the first place. |
| 09:36 | JENNY: And that is our commitment to highway safety and making our roads safer for Georgians.
VERONICA: Now, Lisa, Jenny, I’m guessing that this is maybe where the Safe Kids connection comes in. Tell me what is Safe Kids? LISA: So Safe Kids works to reduce preventable or accidental childhood injuries. So injuries from car crashes from bicycle accidents, from drownings, poisonings, all of those things. |
| 10:02 | LISA: We work with families to make sure that at every step of the way in their home and their outside, in their cars, that those children are as safe as possible.
VERONICA: What’s the partnership like? Is this guidance coming from the State Department of Public Health, Meaghan? MEAGHAN: No, this is actually a completely separate entity. Safe Kids – at the very, very top, you have Safe Kids worldwide, which is the national organization. And from there, you have a state level organization, which is Safe Kids Georgia, and they are helmed at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. |
| 10:35 | MEAGHAN: And from there, they support the development of local coalitions throughout the state. And the last count that I had there were 32 Safe Kids coalitions. Of course, Safe Kids Cobb and Safe Kids Douglas being two of them. So this is comprehensive injury prevention in terms of, I think, from birth up to 14 years of age, maybe a little older depending on the program. So Safe Kids is able to do some things that we cannot address within my particular program because we focus primarily, well, solely on child occupant safety. |
| 11:07 | MEAGHAN: So the wonderful thing about Safe Kids is that they can fill in other areas of injury prevention where we cannot.
VERONICA: When you’re not inside a vehicle. MEAGHAN: Correct. VERONICA: Yes. You might be on a vehicle. You might be pedaling a vehicle, right? Get it. Okay. And you just jump in any time you want to. You don’t have to wait on me to call on you. You don’t have to raise your hand in this House. So let’s talk about some of these things. You mentioned car seat checks fitting stations. What is that all about? Is it as simple as it sounds? LISA: No, it’s not as simple as it is. |
| 11:37 | LISA: That’s one of the things that I think a lot of parents or folks in the community may feel that, oh, you just go buy a car seat and you put it in your car.
VERONICA: Yeah. LISA: But there are so many different cars and different car seats and sizes of children and needs of children that you have to have the expertise to be able to bring that all together to make sure that that child’s buckled up appropriately. And so let me turn it over to both of Jenny and Meaghan. VERONICA: Meaghan and Jenny. Yes, both of these certified child safety technicians, yes. |
| 12:06 | MEAGHAN: There is quite a bit. Whenever I work with a parent or a caregiver, we usually let them know up front. It takes about 45 minutes to work from start to finish with one kid. And what a technician will do is they will evaluate what the caregiver has currently. And by the time everything is said and done, the goal is to empower the caregiver to use the seat on their own. |
| 12:31 | MEAGHAN: And I know that sounds kind of silly, but I mean, as technicians, we have training to parse through all these materials and information and give them the direct input that they need for their situation. But for them, they may not have access to us all the time. They may not be able to call the car seat manufacturer and ask for help.
VERONICA: And an instruction booklet might seem like it could be simple, but as Lisa said, there are so many different kinds of seats, cars, kids. I mean, that’s an endless equation that you’re coming up with and safety is so crucial. |
| 13:01 | VERONICA: We’re talking about the importance of child passenger safety today. And coming up on Lawyers in the House, we are going to discuss just how important some of that one on one time with the right expert can be when it comes to keeping your child safe. This is Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB on Veronica Waters. Be right back.
You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Join us 8 a.m. |
| 13:30 | every Sunday if you want to listen live on 95.5 WSB.
VERONICA: You’re back in the house, Lawyers in the House with Montlick injury Attorneys here on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters. Today, guess what? The lawyers are not in the House. They have stepped aside and are sharing the spotlight with our child passenger safety experts today. Jenny Harty, Meaghan Gibson, Lisa Crossman. Thank you so much again for being in here with us talking about keeping our tiny passengers safe and child passenger safety week is actually upon us. |
| 14:04 | VERONICA: Tell us a little bit about why this child passenger safety is so important. And then let’s launch into discussion about this actual week.
LISA: So I think that it’s so important because our children don’t have control over how they’re buckled up in a car seat. They depend on the adults to know how to do that. The other issue is even the best-intentioned parents may install a car seat wrong. Four out of five car seats are usually installed incorrectly. VERONICA: No way. LISA: Even if the parents do everything they can to learn and read and do it right. |
| 14:36 | LISA: If… they’re just difficult, they’re difficult to install. So that’s why it’s important to link with a certified technician to be able to help you install the car seat in your car with your child so that it’s done right.
VERONICA: That is chilling – 80% of car seats are likely installed incorrectly. And this is what you all see Meaghan and Jenny at these checks. Why is this… this is an opportunity, though, for people to get actual one on one time with an expert just like you, yes? |
| 15:01 | JENNY: Yes. I remember one time I was working at a car seat check and I had a cardiologist come through and you know he was a surgeon who does surgeries on the heart and his car seat was not installed correctly and he was like, how can I have all these degrees, certifications, and I can do surgery on people’s heart and I can’t get the car seat installed correctly? And he just was flabbergasted. So it just kind of shows, you know… it takes his skill set to do surgery on a heart and it takes somebody else’s skill set and education to help him understand and be educated on how to put the car seat in correctly too. |
| 15:51 | VERONICA: That has got to be so gratifying, too, for every parent or caregiver of a child who is hearing this right now and thinking, oh my gosh, how do I make sure my car seat is in my vehicle?
MEAGHAN: I think it would surprise caregivers – parents and caregivers – and you hear me use the term caregivers because it takes a village. And we have a lot of multi-generational families. We have blended families, so we address anybody and everybody. During child passenger safety week, which we’ll talk about later, we want anybody that transports a child. |
| 16:24 | MEAGHAN: You don’t have to necessarily be a parent. You can be a great aunt. It does not matter. If you have a child in your life that you have to transport and you have questions, this is the time to come out and ask them. But I think it would surprise a lot of caregivers to learn that there are car seats that are flat out incompatible with vehicles. We term it as an incompatibility, but there will be times where maybe the shape of the vehicle seat is not compatible with the car seat itself and we will pull out all of our tips and tricks and if we struggle getting a secure installation with the knowledge that we have, then we turn to the caregiver and we’ll provide a recommendation about what they can do. |
| 17:03 | MEAGHAN: And typically, if the seat isn’t compatible, it is, do you have the receipt? We can potentially walk through other solutions, but it’s going to involve probably another seat.
VERONICA: Hold on, Meaghan, let’s put a pin in that, and we’re going to get back to that coming up on Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Stay with us. You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Join us 8 a.m. every Sunday on 95.5 WSP. VERONICA: Hey, welcome back to Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. |
| 17:35 | VERONICA: I’m Veronica Waters, your host back with you with some very special guests here in the house. We have Lisa Crossman, Meaghan Gibson, Jenny Harty, all of them experts – subject matter experts – in the field of child passenger safety. That is our topic today and already there have been some golden nuggets in the first half of the show. Don’t worry if you missed it, make sure you just tune in on your favorite podcast platform when the new episode drops. It’ll be right in your earbuds. And you can always find us on every social platform @Montlicklaw. |
| 18:06 | VERONICA: We are looking forward to hearing from you too. If you want to drop us a question, visit Lawyers in the House dot com. Oh yeah, and see all these amazing, beautiful faces on YouTube, all right? Just look us up, Montlick – Lawyers in the House. Okay, so Lisa and Jenny and Meaghan, we are talking obviously child passenger safety. A sobering statistic: in 2020, the CDC says, 607 child passengers ages 12 and younger were killed in motor vehicle crashes just in the United States alone. |
| 18:35 | VERONICA: More than 63,000 kids were injured. And of the children who were killed in those crashes, 38% of them were not buckled up.
JENNY: Tragic. LISA: It is tragic. JENNY: It is. And it’s preventable. MEAGHAN: It’s really difficult sometimes… as a technician we talk about perceived safety. When our office has been allowed to accompany law enforcement on road checks, they’ll allow us to attend as technicians and offer the opportunity to provide education. |
| 19:06 | MEAGHAN: So we will talk to caregivers. When they open the door and they see… sometimes we’ve seen children sitting next to their seats, or the seat may be in the trunk and we get the response of, “I was just going down the road to the corner store. I’m not driving very fast or I’m not driving very far.” So then we educate them about how the majority of crashes happen within 25 miles from home. Speed is not always the deciding factor in things. I love physics. |
| 19:34 | MEAGHAN: I am horrible at it, but we have a really great way to give context to our caregivers. So we talk about restraining force or how many pounds of force are needed to hold a child in their car seat. So you just take the weight of your child and the speed that you’re traveling, and you multiply those two together. And that’s essentially how much your child would weigh if you came to a sudden stop. So if we have a ten-pound baby and you are driving 40 mph and come to a sudden stop, your child is essentially going to weigh the equivalent of 400 pounds. |
| 20:04 | MEAGHAN: And no matter how much we love our children, and no matter how buff or fit or swole you are, you can’t really hold 400 pounds under those circumstances. And when we’re talking about our older children (because it typically is older children that we see who are not restrained) we’ll flip that and say, you could have a 40-pound kid and be going 10 mph and have the same outcome. So there are too many variables to leave it to chance. So we just encourage caregivers to be buckled up correctly each and every time that they leave. |
| 20:33 | VERONICA: By any chance, have you– has any of you seen a car after an accident with a car seat in … yes, Lisa, oh my goodness, okay.
LISA: I think everybody here has, and it’s very sobering to see how families could have prevented an injury, sorry. It’s just like, oh, if I could have just gotten my hands on that family before that accident. You just want to be able to hold them tight and go, let’s help. |
| 21:03 | LISA: And so I think that’s what our caregiver, I mean, our technicians feel so strongly about being able to help families before something serious happens. Sorry.
VERONICA: No, you don’t have to apologize. That is pure raw real emotion. And listen, this is all about compassion and it’s all about helping people and how can your heart not bleed for someone who has suffered such a horrible loss. LISA: On the other hand, let me turn it on the other thing. |
| 21:32 | LISA: We had a firefighter one time that was very engaged in our Safe Kids program. She knew what to do, felt like, but wasn’t certified, but felt like she knew what to do. She brought her child, her baby, over to one of our certified technicians. And they said, okay, well, here, let’s make some adjustments and they adjusted that car seat. She said, okay, I wouldn’t have thought to do that. She left there. Shortly after that their car was T-boned. You do not even want to see what that car looked like. |
| 22:04 | LISA: The mom, who was in a seat belt, still sustained serious injuries and was in the hospital for a very long time. Her child was uninjured in that accident. And she credits the safety technicians and the fact that her child was properly restrained in a car seat to be able to have walked away from that accident with no injuries. That child has grown up to be a firefighter and a Safe Kid advocate and I think…
MEAGHAN: She’s a technician as well. |
| 22:35 | LISA: And she’s a technician as well and was even the face of our national campaign.
MEAGHAN: Yes, they did a… Safe Kids Worldwide did a national campaign. This was probably mid-90s, maybe late 2000s. And they are a wonderful duo. They are still active in the field together and we love seeing them. And to your point, when we do have families that survive or children that survive those crashes, which great, the recovery is also very difficult. |
| 23:04 | MEAGHAN: We see ripple effects from that from the public health perspective. It can take a caregiver, an able-bodied caregiver out of the workforce, for instance, because they have to serve as a caregiver for their child. There’s no child care options available for children who are spica casted, which is where they are casted from the waist down and cannot bend, so that requires adaptive transportation, which we work with children that fall into that category. There are so many ripple effects from it that, again, just can’t say it enough. |
| 23:34 | MEAGHAN: It is worth every effort, every dollar, every metric you want to throw at it, prevention is always better than treatment on the back end.
JENNY: I will also say that within several months of our family’s car crash, I had a dear friend of mine who took it upon herself to find -and she lived near the coast- find a technician in her area. |
| 24:01 | JENNY: And she had four young children herself, and she went out and found a technician and got her seats installed correctly and got educated about how to install her seats and she was involved in a car crash herself and it was another horrific car crash and in fact the car landed upside down on the roof. |
| 24:25 | JENNY: And so all the children were in the car and you know they were literally upside down and had to cut the children out, but all the children were safe in the car after that crash. And as she said, I would have never ever known about a technician or known to do that had it not been from your example of what a car seat does and what a technician is. |
| 24:50 | JENNY: And she said, I attribute the fact that we walked away from that crash because of you and what you do and the proof that you are of what a technician and the living proof of you and your family.
LISA: I think the point is that I think all parents in general want to do the best by their children, right, and want to keep them safe and free from injury. And just like you would take your children to the pediatrician or you take your car to an expert mechanic, you have to be able to access certified car technicians to help you with how to properly protect your children while they’re in a car. |
| 25:26 | VERONICA: Yeah. And just, you know, just FYI, everyone, just because we’re talking about child passenger safety week in the month of September, there are technicians on duty around the state all year long. You don’t have to wait for a special week to do it. Right, ladies? And as Meaghan just said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Try to prevent those injuries. You don’t want to visit your kid in the hospital or worse. Let’s talk about some of those things that you do see in the field, though. You’ve talked about how you’ve corrected some of these issues, but are there overriding mistakes that you see, or…? |
| 25:58 | MEAGHAN: Yes. We refer to it as harnessing, but buckling your child in for one, that is a really common area of misuse, a lot of the time. And I do think the message… I don’t know about you, I feel like the messages are getting out there more. So I do see more cognizant caregivers, which is great. But we do have caregivers that are concerned that the harness straps may be too tight on their child. So when we have the chance to meet with them, we’ll educate them that essentially that harness is their seat belt. |
| 26:28 | MEAGHAN: As adults, we take it for granted, our seat belt can lock up and release when you slam on the brakes or a crash is detected. A harness and a car seat cannot do that. It will only be as snug as you make it when you depart. So it does need to hug baby or hug your older kid, but a harness is not going to be so snug that it leaves a mark on them. It shouldn’t disrupt their breathing or anything like that. We’re not trying to choke any kiddos in car seats. So we’ll talk to them about how to appropriately snug it and do what’s called the pinch test. |
| 26:58 | MEAGHAN: And for people that are listening, basically, the pinch test is where you take your fingers and you pinch vertically on the harness straps at the shoulder and you want to make sure you cannot pinch any excess material on the harness. If you can, then you should continue snugging it a little more until it passes that pinch test. And the other way we phrase it. And I’m going to do this just to irritate him when he hears it. We call it the baby shark test as well. So if you know what the baby shark is, the up and down. Exactly. Also, I’m real sorry to any of the caregivers that have kids in their car, and they start singing it. |
| 27:28 | MEAGHAN: My apologies. But it’s a great way to remember it. And we try to make stuff like that memorable for caregivers. So it’s easier for them to recall it and use it.
VERONICA: Okay, I love this. Some of it is just an issue of incompatibility though. Like you mentioned sometimes maybe your car seat just won’t go in your vehicle. And I don’t know how you can find that out other than going to a technician. Is that right? Because maybe some people are like, I can’t, it doesn’t seem like this is quite right. But you can tell them. You can tell them. |
| 27:57 | MEAGHAN: Yes. And the way that that usually comes about is the caregiver will say, you know, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get… I couldn’t get it tight. I couldn’t get it -the installation of the seat – snug. One of the other common misuses that we see that rolls into that is they will use both the lower anchor connectors and the seat belt together. I know I’m using technical terms. So for my caregivers out there, the hook things that are in the bottom of your car seat, you’re actually typically only supposed to use either the hook things, the lower anchor connectors, or the seatbelt to install your car seat, not both. |
| 28:29 | MEAGHAN: If you want to use both, that’s the benefit of coming to a technician. That actually has to be approved by both the car seat manufacturer and the vehicle manufacturer.
VERONICA: Wow, there’s so much… There’s so much valuable information here. I would never have known that. Of course I don’t own any car seats. I don’t have any kids, but… LISA: The other piece of this is that the car seat technicians have access to any car seats that have been recalled. They have that list and know that at any given point. So sometimes there are reasons that manufacturers will recall a seat. And a parent/ caregiver may not know that. |
| 28:58 | LISA: And so… but the certified technicians do, and we can help replace that car seat and get one that’s appropriate.
VERONICA: Which is stellar and to your earlier point, maybe if you have a receipt, if it’s not recalled, but it just won’t fit. Do you have your receipt because you’re going to need to exchange this for something else? And I actually have done a story with Jenny Harty of IRideSafe at Montlick Injury Attorneys talking about counterfeit car seats. Who knew that was even a thing? MEAGHAN: It has become a huge problem. We noticed it during COVID. |
| 29:27 | MEAGHAN: And it was really primarily isolated along like the east coast of Georgia and that it started creeping into middle Georgia and now we are getting reports from technicians in the metro area and the surrounding area, the typical knockoff is of what’s called a Doona- that’s the brand. It’s a really notable car seat because it has wheels on it. So we’re just encouraging caregivers to make sure that they are purchasing directly from the manufacturer and not a third party. And there are other resources available to make sure that you are not using a counterfeit car seat. |
| 29:58 | VERONICA: We’ve got just about a minute left before we get to the Montlick Closing Argument, but I need to ask you quickly. What is the… what do you tell parents who say, my kid doesn’t want to be in this little booster seat anymore? They want to be in a big boy, big girl seat belt. Can you move them out too soon?
MEAGHAN: Yes. Seat belts are what you can graduate them too soon. Real quickly between Georgia law and best practice, Georgia law says that a child can get out of a booster seat once they reach the age of 8. Best practice is to keep them in a seat belt until the seat belt fits because seat belts are made to fit adult bodies. |
| 30:30 | MEAGHAN: All of those wonderful occupant protection features in your vehicle, airbags, dynamic latch plates, all these other things – those are made for adults. Most 8-year olds are not the appropriate size to benefit from those protection features.
VERONICA: Amazing information from Meaghan Gibson, Jenny Harty and Lisa Crossman. Coming up on Lawyers in the House, the Montlick Closing Argument. Don’t go away. You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick. |
| 30:59 | If you want to listen to our radio show live, you can hear it every Sunday, 8 a.m. on 95.5 WSB.
VERONICA: Welcome back one more time to the House, Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters here with child passenger safety experts Jenny Harty, Meaghan Gibson and Lisa Crossman. We are talking about how to keep your tiny tots and bigger tots safe in the car when you ride. |
| 31:27 | VERONICA: But first of all, want to clarify something. Meaghan was talking about buying correct and safe car seats. I just want to verify. What do you mean when you say buying directly from the manufacturer?
MEAGHAN: So you just want to make sure that who you’re purchasing the seat from is actually who is shipping it. So if you purchase it from walmart.com, make sure it’s being sold and shipped by Walmart and not some other company that is allowed to use Walmart’s website as a third-party seller. VERONICA: Right, same on Amazon, and I see the same thing when I was looking for a deal on an Apple product. |
| 31:58 | VERONICA: I made sure to get it from sold by and shipped by Amazon. So just be careful of the third-party sellers on the legitimate platforms from which we buy. And what about garage sales? Consignment stores.
JENNY: You never want to buy a car seat unless you know the history of that car seat because you never want to use a car seat after it’s been involved in a crash. VERONICA: That takes us to the Montlick Closing Argument, which is right here in your faces now. |
| 32:26 | VERONICA: There might be like a Carfax, but there is no car seat fax, right? So you got to know the history of your car seat. And talk about the crash thing, Jenny.
JENNY: So, like I said, you never want to use a car seat after it’s been involved in a crash. And if you and your family were involved in a crash, you want to check with your car seat manufacturer to reach out to them and get an understanding from them on what their guidelines are for using that car seat after a crash because every car seat manufacturer has different guidelines on what to do based on the severity of the crash on how to use or if that car seat needs to be replaced. |
| 33:04 | VERONICA: All right. How do we find technicians?
MEAGHAN: There are lots of ways to find us. Two of the easiest ways you can go to cert—C-E-R-T (as in Tom) dot Safe Kids dot org and click on “find a tech.” You can also go to safer car dot gov, which is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website and search for a technician there. The cert dot save kids dot org will allow you to search by county or zip code, which is more helpful. VERONICA: And you know, interestingly enough, we talk a lot about Georgia law, Lisa, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s like that in all of the lower 48. |
| 33:38 | LISA: Correct. So you need to check wherever the state you’re in about what their laws are, and then reach out to car seat technicians in those states.
VERONICA: All right. So we are here on Lawyers in the House. Thank you so much to Jenny Harty from iRideSafe, one of the Montlick Injury Attorneys’ public safety programs. With Meaghan Gibson who is a child passenger occupant safety specialist with the Georgia Department of Health. That’s kind of right, right? I got it, right? |
| 34:07 | VERONICA: And of course, Lisa Crossman, who is the deputy director of Cobb & Douglas Public Health and the chair of the Cobb Safety Village. We are hoping that you got a lot of great information from us today on this very special episode. Thank you so much. The closing argument. Be safe. Don’t count on second chances. Is your kid in the right car seat? Do you want to wait for an accident before you find out? I’m Veronica Waters, this is Lawyers in the House. We’ll see you next time. |
| 34:38 | You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Catch us live every Sunday, 8 a.m. on 95.5 WSB. |
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