#9 - The number of aircraft collisions on the ground is

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen-CE. The correct answer choice is (A)

The argument is that since many fatalities from aircraft collisions on the ground are caused by seats restricting access to emergency exits, the total number of fatalities could be reduced by removing the seats that restrict access.

There are some far-fetched criticisms of this argument, but a valid one is as follows: removing the restrictive seats might just create a logjam of people.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice, and offers confirming evidence by means of an analogy. Although a theater might not generally offer a very good comparison to an aircraft, it offers decent comparison to an aircraft on the ground. This response gives you reason to believe that removing restrictive seats, in general, saves lives.

Answer choice (B): This choice does not respond to whether lives will be saved, and is incorrect. Furthermore, in general this choice is weakening.

Answer choice (C): Since the argument concerns whether removing seats is a good idea, a discussion of whether other methods are available is irrelevant, and possibly weakening, so this choice is wrong.

Answer choice (D): This answer choice might be damaging to the stimulus, because it suggests that reducing passenger capacity could increase injuries, which could increase fatalities, so this choice is wrong. Furthermore, this choice is only superficially relevant. It is unreasonable to believe that this choice is discussing planes of equal sizes, so the situation described has no relevance.

Answer choice (E): Since the stimulus concerned the evacuation of the plane, the issue of how many people are initially injured is irrelevant, and this response is incorrect. It is reasonable to assume that the stimulus is discussing fatalities due to crowd crushing, or due to a failure to evacuate the plane before secondary effects such as fire become a problem.

[Blueballoon5%]

For the answer choice (E) explanation, it is necessarily true that "the stimulus concerned the evacuation of the plane, the issue of how many people are initially injured is irrelevant." The stimulus at first seems to refer to fatalities in plane collisions more generally, then the stimulus later argues that the difficulties of evacuation is the cause of these fatalities. While the discussion of seat belts in answer choice E is not going to strengthen the stimulus, I don't think that topic of initial injury (which could be later fatal) is irrelevant to the stimulus. I'm not sure though (could someone clarify this confusion).

E.g. If answer choice E was worded, "The safety belt attached to the aircraft seats function does not protect passengers from the full force of impact in the event of a collusion," can this be the correct answer to this question because it eliminates an alternative solution? If this choice is one possible correct answer, then would the issue of initial injury be relevant to the stimulus?

Thank you! I hope you can help!

[Shannon Parker]

For the answer choice (E) explanation, it is necessarily true that "the stimulus concerned the evacuation of the plane, the issue of how many people are initially injured is irrelevant." The stimulus at first seems to refer to fatalities in plane collisions more generally, then the stimulus later argues that the difficulties of evacuation is the cause of these fatalities. While the discussion of seat belts in answer choice E is not going to strengthen the stimulus, I don't think that topic of initial injury (which could be later fatal) is irrelevant to the stimulus. I'm not sure though (could someone clarify this confusion).

E.g. If answer choice E was worded, "The safety belt attached to the aircraft seats function does not protect passengers from the full force of impact in the event of a collusion," can this be the correct answer to this question because it eliminates an alternative solution? If this choice is one possible correct answer, then would the issue of initial injury be relevant to the stimulus?

Thank you! I hope you can help!

While your argument would likely be very valid in real life, it is important to remember to stick to the stimulus. The argument contained in the stimulus is concerned only with those fatalities that are caused by impediment to escape. That is why the topic of initial injury is irrelevant.

I am not sure i understand your second question. In what way would your modified wording of answer choice E be eliminating an alternative solution?

[fmbb]

I was stuck between choosing A or D. I ended up choosing D because:
Cause -> effect
inherent flaw in cabin design -> fatalities
I felt like D eliminated an alternative cause. It could be argued that its not because of the cabin design restricting access but because there were a lot of people and perhaps not enough time or a stampede of sorts in panic. By saying that smaller passenger capacity suffer more, for me, sounded like it supported the original cause.

Can you please further explain why D is incorrect and what my mental thought should have been instead?

[Daniel Stern]

Hi FM:

D posits that those on smaller capacity planes suffer more serious injuries in the event of a crash.

The stimulus argument we are trying to strengthen discusses reducing fatalities from airline collisions.

With that subtle shift, D launches itself out of the ballpark of possible answers: no answer discussing how serious or not serious the injuries are is going to strengthen our argument about how to prevent fatalities.

I hope this is helpful. Good luck in your studies!
Dan

[jennyli0804]

Hi,

I didn't think (A) was right at first because it seemed irrelevant to talk about theater fires when the premise was about aircrafts. I thought that knowing anything about theaters would tell us nothing about airplane fatalities (because the space in theaters and airplanes are different).

While I do see how (A) could work as an analogy, I don't quite understand why (A) wasn't irrelevant. I guess my question is: How often are answer choices are given as analogies and how would you know it was an "analogy" rather than "outside information"?

Thank you!

[James Finch]

Hi Jenny,

It looks like you fell into this question's trap of concentrating on the language used, not the idea behind it. The stimulus is making a causal argument that a lack of access to emergency exits is causing many fatalities during aircraft collisions. There are only a few ways to strengthen this link: eliminate a possible alternate cause, show that reverse causation isn't possible (not relevant here), or show that when the cause happens, the effect happens as well, or vice versa, that when the cause is absent, the effect is as well.

(A) works because it shows that when we remove the purported cause (increased access to emergency exits), then we also see the effect removed (fatalities go down).

Hope this clears things up!

[180bound]

I picked A but even so A seemed very "shell game-ish" to me. For instance, the stimulus talks about physical designs in the cabin that physically impede people exiting. Choice A has nothing to do with people being physically impeded. In short the stimulus says that people COULDN'T get out where as A states that people just didn't know where to go.

My question is, in presence of stronger choices, would A have been a shell game answer?

[Paul Marsh]

Hi 180bound!

I would not characterize Answer Choice (A) as a shell game answer. A shell game answer choice is one that sneakily tries to change a word or phrase from the stimulus. For example, sometimes an answer choice will be incorrect because it changed "Some" (in the stimulus) to "All" (in the answer choice). For a nice description, check out this previous PowerScore forum post from one of our instructors:

https://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewtopic.php?t=8801

(A) is not trying to use sleight of hand to sneakily change a word or two. Instead, it is blatantly a completely situation, albeit one with clear similarities. It is using an analogy to strengthen the argument.

Choice A has nothing to do with people being physically impeded.

I disagree with this assessment. (A) does not directly say - but seems to support - that previously people were impeded by seats in way of the exit, whereas now they have a clear aisle to that same exit. Thus it is an analogous situation that helps support the argument. Correct answer choices for Strengthen questions that are analogies are not super common, but they do appear. Strengthen questions can bring in totally new information or scenarios in an attempt to bolster the argument. Don't let yourself dismiss a Strengthen answer choice too soon just because the scenario initially seems unrelated to the stimulus.

Hope that helps!