Logical Reasoning

PT142 · S1 · Q24 Any driver involved in an accident

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Any driver involved in an accident leading to personal injury or property damage exceeding $500 is legally required to report the accident to the department of motor vehicles, unless the driver is incapable of doing so.

Statements

Conditional: any (left side), unless (if-not)

Driver involved in accident and personal injury or Driver must prop damage > $500 → report and accident capable of reporting

Fact

Ted was the driver in an accident, but is not required to report it.

Evaluate

When we see conditionals in Must Be True, they will usually either be chained to other conditionals or applied to some fact that triggers the rule (or more often the contrapositive).

This fact about Ted triggers the contrapositive, because Ted is not required to report.

With a conditional that says A and B and C → D

Then knowing ~D triggers this contrapositive: ~D → ~A or ~B or ~C

So since Ted is not required to report, he either - wasn't a driver involved in an accident - the accident didn't injure anyone or do more than $500 in property damage - he is incapable of reporting it

He can be more than one of those things, but we do already know he's a driver in the accident.

So either he's incapable or reporting it, it didn't injure anyone or do more than $500 of damage, or both.

Goal

Find an answer rewarding our understanding that either Ted is incapable or he didn't trigger the injury/damage part of the rule.

24.

Which one of the following can be properly inferred from the statements above?

If Ted is incapable of
Unsupported Relationship
This answer tries to make one of our two options guarantee the other, but it's certainly possible that Ted is incapable but his accident did lead to damage > $500. Someone who is the driver in an accident that does more than $500 but is incapable of reporting the accident isn't covered by this rule (“unless they're incapable” signifies an exception).
5% picked this
Correct
If Ted's car was damaged
Why this is right
If Ted triggers the injury/damage rule, then his only remaining way of not having to report the accident is that he's incapable. At first we might wonder whether it's cool that the property damage was to his own car, but the rule doesn't specify whether the damage was inflicted on someone else or oneself.
Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
57% picked this
Someone other than Ted is
Out of Scope: someone else
This rule is not guaranteeing that someone better report this thing! It's possible that no one is legally required to report this accident.
1% picked this
If Ted is incapable of
Could Be Both
If Ted is incapable of reporting, it might ALSO be true that the accident didn't trigger the injury/damage part of the rule. We knew that Ted was incapable, didn't trigger the injury/damage rule, or both.
6% picked this
Either no one was injured
Could Be Incapable
It's possible that neither injury nor > $500 damage happened, because the other option is that Ted is incapable of reporting.
32% picked this

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