Logical Reasoning

PT137 · S3 · Q21 Safety consultant: Judged by the number

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Safety consultant: Judged by the number of injuries per licensed vehicle, minivans are the safest vehicles on the road.

Conclusion

Minivans have a better safety record because they're driven mainly by low-risk drivers.

Evidence

Minivans have the lowest number of injuries per vehicle, but in crash tests they do no better at protecting occupants than do other vehicles of the same size.

Evaluation

We have a Curious Fact: why are minivans lowest number of injuries per vehicle? One might think it's because they're big and boxy and can take a punch, but crash tests show they're no better than similar sized vehicles.

So the author assumes that it must be safer drivers that explain why minivans have this injury advantage.

With all Curious Fact → Causal Interpretation arguments, we ask ourselves: 1. What else could explain the Curious Fact? 2. How plausible is the Author's Hypothesis?

Goal

Since this is strengthen, we need an answer that rules out a different reason why minivans incur fewer injuries (f.e. ), or an answer that increases the plausibility of the hypothesis.

The most common way to Strengthen causal arguments is "no cause, no effect", so you could see an answer like .

21.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the safety consultant's argument?

  1. When choosing what kind of

    Opposite

    The author thinks that minivans do not perform particularly well in crash tests, but are driven by low-risk drivers. This answer makes it sound like low-risk drivers wouldn't be likely to choose to drive a minivan.

    8% picked this

  2. Judged by the number of

    Opposite

    This undermines the plausibility of the author's hypothesis. Since he is selling the idea that primarily low-risk drivers drive minivans, he would expect that minivans get into fewer accidents than average.

    15% picked this

  3. Minivans tend to carry more

    Weak Impact

    This does rule out the alternate explanation that minivans have fewer injuries per vehicle because they have fewer passengers than most vehicles. But since that's a pretty unlikely alternate explanation, ruling it out doesn't have as much impact as (E) does.

    12% picked this

  4. In general, the larger a

    No Impact / Opposite

    In crash tests, we're only comparing minivans to similar sized vehicles. And even the drift of this answer is in the wrong direction, because it sounds like a minivan is inherently safer, if you start saying "the bigger it is, the better it protects".

    3% picked this

  5. Correct

    Minivans generally have worse braking

    Why this is right

    This rules out the possibility that minivans have fewer injuries because they avoid accidents due to better safety features (not due to better drivers). It also directly boosts the plausibility of the conclusion, in terms of the idea that minivans are not inherently safer than other vehicles.

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

    63% picked this

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