Logical Reasoning

PT12 · S1 · Q19 The use of automobile safety seats

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The use of automobile safety seats by children aged 4 and under has nearly doubled in the past 8 years.

Conclusion (it is clear that)

The increase in the use of automobile safety seats by children aged 4 and under has prevented child fatalities that otherwise would have occurred.

Evidence

The use of automobile safety seats by children aged 4 and under has nearly doubled in the past 8 years.

The number of children aged 4 and under who were killed in car accidents rose by 10 percent over the past 8 years.

The total number of serious automobile accidents rose by 20 percent during that period.

Evaluate

The author is presenting a causal conclusion based on the correlation between increased use of safety seats and the relative decrease in the expected percentage increase of child fatalities compared to the overall increase in serious automobile accidents. The argument assumes safety seats are effectively reducing the fatalities that would have increased proportionally.

CURIOUS FACT: how come fatalities for young kids in car accidents haven't risen as high as they should have over the last 8 years?

EXPLANATION: we're using better safety seats than before, and those seats are preventing what would otherwise have been fatal injuries.

We can strengthen this argument by showing that safety seats are indeed a significant factor in reducing fatalities. Or we can rule out an alternate explanation for why car accident fatalities haven't gone up as much as expected (i.e. ).

Goal

Let's find an answer that supports the plausibility of the "carseats are saving kids" hypothesis or that rules out an alternate explanation for why accidents aren't resulting in as many fatalities for young kids as they used to.

(The most common way to strengthen is "no cause, no effect", so we might see an answer say ).

19.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

  1. Some of the automobile safety

    No Impact

    We're trying to explain some phenomenon involving children under 4. If there are kids 5 and over using carseats, god bless them, but they have nothing to do with this conversation.

    2% picked this

  2. Correct

    The proportion of serious automobile

    Why this is right

    This is strengthening by ruling out an alternate explanation. It's possible that child fatalities haven't gone up as much as expected because kids just aren't riding in cars as much as they were 8 years ago. This answer rules out that alternate explanation, by saying, "Nope, kids are involved in the same slice of serious accidents now as they were 8 years ago." Sameness usually strengthens in causal arguments, because you're "controlling" for some other potentially causal variable.

    Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    62% picked this

  3. Children are taking more trips

    Weaker Impact

    Mathematically, combining these two facts (more trips but same amount of time in total) means that children are taking, on average, shorter trips in the car than before. More of them, but less time in duration. But who cares? The idea that you're spending the same amount of time in a car by taking more trips but of shorter duration doesn't suggest anything about carseats or about dying in fewer car accidents than expected. However, like (B), the second half of this answer does control for a variable: children are spending the same amount of time in cars as they did 8 years ago, so it does undermine the alternate explanation that, "the reason 0-4 year olds aren't dying as much in accidents isn't because of the carseats, it's because they just don't spend as much time in cars as they used to." But this has weaker impact than (B) because it controls for a fuzzier variable: the total amount of time in a car. We care way more about whether kids' involvement in serious accidents has changed, than about whether their total time in a car has changed, because we're specifically looking at a correlation between occurrence of fatalities and occurrence of serious accidents, not at a correlation between occurrence of fatalities and time spent in the car.

    20% picked this

  4. The sharpest increase in the

    Unclear Impact

    We know that car seat use has almost doubled over the last 8 years, and this answer is just saying there's been a bigger increase among the 3 and 4 year olds than there has been among the 0-2 year olds. Okay ... why do we care whether the bigger spike in usage occurred among older vs. younger kids? We've been talking about the 0-4 range this whole time. Why are we subdividing it into 0-2 vs. 3-4? Telling us that the biggest spike in car seat usage is among 3-4 year olds is only useful if we also hear that the biggest dip in fatalities is also among 3-4 year olds. That would provide more corroboration that car seats are making a causal difference with fatalities. But as is, this answer has no clear impact.

    5% picked this

  5. The number of fatalities among

    Opposite Impact

    This suggests that there's some alternate explanation for the lower than expected fatality rates, because it also applies to adults, who obviously are not being saved by riding in car seats. This is basically a classic Effect w/o Cause plausibility weakener.

    10% picked this

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