#21 - Safety consultant: Judged by the number of injuries

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen—CE. The correct answer choice is (E)

The stimulus begins by describing how minivans have an excellent safety record based on the number of injuries per licensed vehicle. Yet minivans do not protect their occupants any better than other similar vehicles during crashes. The conclusion provides a two-part causal argument to explain minivans’ exceptional safety statistics in the first sentence: minivans’ safety record is not caused by their inherent safety, but rather by the low-risk disposition of the drivers who own them.

Cause Effect

• Low-risk drivers (not inherent safety) Exceptional safety statistics of minivans
  (judged by the number of injuries/vechicle)

Our goal is to identify an answer choice that strengthens the causal argument in the conclusion. Any answer choice suggesting that low-risk drivers are more likely to be the reason why minivans have an excellent safety record would strengthen this conclusion. Note also that the author rejected an alternative cause for the exceptional safety statistics—the inherent safety of minivans. Therefore, any answer choice that makes it less likely that the minivans’ inherent safety caused their excellent safety record would also strengthen the argument.

Answer choice (A): This is the Opposite answer. The premises suggest that minivans do not perform particularly well in crash tests. If true, this answer choice suggests that low-risk drivers are likely to select vehicles other than minivans. This makes it less likely that such drivers caused the minivans’ excellent safety record, weakening the conclusion of the argument.

Answer choice (B): This answer choice indicates that minivans do not outperform other vehicles in the number of accidents per licensed vehicle. However, this does not alter the fact that minivans do outperform other vehicles in the number of injuries per licensed vehicle. The conclusion focuses on explaining why minivans have such low injury statistics. The number of accidents per vehicle has no bearing on the issue of whether low-risk drivers caused the low injury statistics, and might even weaken the conclusion if we assume that such drivers are generally less likely to get into an accident.

Answer choice (C): This answer choice also has no effect on the conclusion. If minivans carry more passengers than most vehicles, then it is even more impressive that minivans have fewer injuries per licensed vehicle. However, this answer choice does not make it more likely that low-risk drivers are the cause of these statistics, nor does it make inherent safety less likely to be the cause.

Answer choice (D): This answer choice suggests that size may be the reason why there are so few injuries per licensed vehicle. This is an alternate cause to low-risk drivers and therefore weakens the argument.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. A vehicle’s braking and emergency handling capabilities are both safety factors. This answer choice directly attacks the safety of the minivans, making it less likely that the inherent safety of the minivans is the cause of their impressive safety record. By attacking the alternate cause, this answer choice makes it more likely that low-risk drivers are the cause of minivans’ excellent safety record.

[lathlee]

Admin edit: due to LSAC policies and copyright law, complete LSAT questions cannot be posted online. However, posting in this section of the forum (Test Explanations) immediately identifies the question, and eliminates the need for the text to be posted. Note: you can quote small sections of the question as needed for your question.


I see this is strengthening conclusion by cause and effect.
Cause is the low-risk drivers are the primary driver of the mini-vans are the cause. Effect is Van is the the safest vehicles on the road in regards to the number of injuries per licensed vehicles.

according to LSAT logic bible reasoning section, there are five options to do so:

as in 1) eliminate alternative cause for the effect.
b) cause occurs make sure effect occurs
c) effect doesn’t occur while cause doesn’t occur
d) make sure effect and cause are not reversed.
e) make sure stat errors do not exist.

I knew the answers were either A. b) or E ) is correct due to belong to the category of eliminating alternative cause. Other choices are all distractions. A) might be correct due to belonging to category of B) cause occurs and effect occurs as in low-risk drivers b) uses stastical data to prove the data but doesn’t state anything about the effect, the low – risk drivers as the primary cause, so I eliminated.

I chose E) as the final answer since E ) seems to do the job of eliminating alternative cause for the effect in stronger degree which is the correct answer according to the answer sheet. But this is why I am posting this problem on the web. I don’t get why . A) or B) are incorrect in clear distinctive manner which I believe not knowing correctly and precisely will cost me in the future . especially a) said often which e said generally which generally tends to be more higher frequency choice. But doesn’t A) also performs the same task. cuz A) states The low risk drivers choose the cars that is best perform particularly well that belong to strengthen the conclusion by cause occurs make sure effect occurs.

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi lathlee,

Thanks for your question. Your structural understanding of the argument is correct, as well as your analysis of why (E) is correct (eliminates alternate cause). (A) and (B) are explained above. Hope this clears it up!

Thanks,

[okjoannawow]

Hi,

I understand why E is right-- We strengthened the claim that minivans are not safe. But, I selected answer choice B because I thought it also demonstrated that minivans aren't safe. The only difference I see between E and B is that E has stronger language. I didn't quite understand the admin's explanation as to why B was incorrect. Could someone explain further why it's wrong so I'll be avoid this error in the future?

Thank you!

[Malila Robinson]

Hi okjoannawow,

For Answer B, saying that "minivans are no safer than most other kinds of vehicles" does not mean that they are less safe than most other vehicles, they might (for example) have similar or identical safety in comparison to other vehicles. In that case it may still be true that minivans end up being the safest vehicles on the road because of other factors related to injuries. Thus, the answer doesn't have an effect on the argument.

Hope that helps!

-Malila

[PresidentLSAT]

I'm trying to make sense of this question but it seems impossible.

The author is concluding that minivans' safety isn't because they are safer than other cars, but because they are driven by extremely cautious drivers.

The author supports this argument by referencing a crash test that was conducted which showed that they were functionally similar in protecting passengers like other cars of their size.

We need information that reinforces the author's claim that the safety record of minivans are due to the kind of drivers that use them.

a. If there is a deliberate attempt to select cars that perform well in crash tests and per the stimulus, minivans were no different than cars of similar size, I wonder what would happen if the meticulous selection didn't happen. It's unclear. Eliminate.

b. This choice is judging accidents per vehicle. The stimulus is about injuries per vehicle. What's important here to know is that, minivans may be involved in a lot of road accidents but with significantly low rates of injury. This information here makes it different from accidents per license vehicle.

c. This information is irrelevant. The support of the stimulus makes a comparison to cars of similar size

d. But we're trying to prove they (minivans) aren't inherently safer.

e. This was a tough sell and is still is. By highlighting other information that makes its safety claim questionable, we are provided with information that weakens idea that minivans are safe.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[Adam Tyson]

What you are overlooking about answer E, PresidentLSAT, is that it eliminates an alternate cause for the safety record of these minivans.

We know it can't be because they do better in crashes, because the stimulus said they do just the same as other vehicles do. From there, the author concludes that it's the drivers that are causing the better outcome. But what if there is another cause, like maybe minivans are built in a way that makes it easier to avoid a crash in the first place? If they handle better than other cars, or have other safety features that other cars lack that helps the driver avoid accidents, then the cause might not be the drivers but the vehicles themselves.

Answer E attacks that alternate cause and goes the full opposite direction. These vehicles are terrible! They should be crashing even more than other vehicles! There should be more injuries per vehicle if this is true! So how the heck did they manage to come out smelling like a rose? It's not their performance in crash tests, and now we also know it's not better handling or better brakes, so that's even more reason to believe the conclusion that it is better drivers. The alternate cause being eliminated helps support the cause advanced by the author!

[Henry Z]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen—CE. The correct answer choice is (E)

Answer choice (C): This answer choice also has no effect on the conclusion. If minivans carry more passengers than most vehicles, then it is even more impressive that minivans have fewer injuries per licensed vehicle. However, this answer choice does not make it more likely that low-risk drivers are the cause of these statistics, nor does it make inherent safety less likely to be the cause.

I chose (C) because I thought the crash test already proves that minivans are not inherently safer, so fewer injuries per vehicle must suggest fewer accidents, thus low-risk drivers.

Just to make sure, the reason why (C) doesn't "make inherent safety less likely to be the cause" is that minivans' inherent safety is much more than the crash test? They're not the same thing, so when there're fewer accidents, the reason could be the safer drivers, but could also be some other aspects of minivans' inherent safety than anti-crashness, such as those mentioned in (E), braking and emergency handling capabilities?

[Adam Tyson]

Right, Henry. That answer doesn't add anything to the claim that it's the drivers that are the cause of the good outcome, because it could still be some other cause, like something else inherent in the vehicles other than crash-worthiness.

[Henry Z]

I have some new thoughts on (C). The argument is to find out an explanation of minivans' small number of injuries, and (C) shows the number is indeed unusually small. It doesn't suggest why, only strengthens a premise that we already knew.

So is (C) a premise booster? Can we eliminate a premise booster in Strengthen Q, or is it only wrong in NA Q?