Q17 - A safety report indicates that

[mturner]

Can someone explain why answer E doesn't resolve the discrepancy? I'm thinking that some elements that doesn't address seat belts would not resolve the discrepancy, but there were a few other choices that discussed something other than the belts.

Please advise.

Thanks!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Thanks for bringing this question to the forum!

We're asked to resolve an apparent discrepancy. What is this discrepancy?

1. traffic fatalities typically decline by around 7 percent when city's pass strict laws on wearing seat belts.
2. in a certain city that has passed strict laws on seat belts, the number of traffic fatalities have remained the same.

Answer choices (A), (B), and (C) are pretty easy to see that they would provide explanations for why the certain city did not see a drop in traffic fatalities.

(D) explains why the city could have the seat belt law and yet why it would not have the desired effect.
(E) is close but represents information about the wrong group. Instead of offering information on those who died, it should have provided information on all drivers in the city. Here's why, the seat belt law could have convinced no one to wear a seat belt, or it could have convinced everyone in the city but 5 lone holdouts. Either way, it's possible to have most of those who died, to be people who were not wearing a seat belt. Since this information doesn't tell us whether people were in general wearing their seat belts and does not offer an alternative reason why the fatalities would have remained the same in spite of the seat belt laws, we cannot use this answer choice to resolve the paradox.

Sorry about that really long-winded explanation! Let me know if you still have a question here though.

[zainrizvi]

Thanks for bringing this question to the forum!

We're asked to resolve an apparent discrepancy. What is this discrepancy?

1. traffic fatalities typically decline by around 7 percent when city's pass strict laws on wearing seat belts.
2. in a certain city that has passed strict laws on seat belts, the number of traffic fatalities have remained the same.

Answer choices (A), (B), and (C) are pretty easy to see that they would provide explanations for why the certain city did not see a drop in traffic fatalities.

(D) explains why the city could have the seat belt law and yet why it would not have the desired effect.
(E) is close but represents information about the wrong group. Instead of offering information on those who died, it should have provided information on all drivers in the city. Here's why, the seat belt law could have convinced no one to wear a seat belt, or it could have convinced everyone in the city but 5 lone holdouts. Either way, it's possible to have most of those who died, to be people who were not wearing a seat belt. Since this information doesn't tell us whether people were in general wearing their seat belts and does not offer an alternative reason why the fatalities would have remained the same in spite of the seat belt laws, we cannot use this answer choice to resolve the paradox.

Sorry about that really long-winded explanation! Let me know if you still have a question here though.

If we had information about all drivers, rather than just the ones that died, would that resolve the paradox? I was really confused with this question.

[canylaw]

Can someone please elaborate more why answer choice E is correct.One way could be just the process of elemination.Also,I don't see any other contenders.Is that good enough reason in the test to pick an answer choice when you have limited time.

[bramon.elizabeth]

I know this is an old post, but I'll give a crack at the explanation.

Hopefully here we can see why (B), (C), and (D) contribute to an explanation. (A) is suspicious because it requires us to assume that driving faster is more dangerous, and that drivers are not all following the old speed limits. That being said, it's still a much better answer than (E), because there's only one way to interpret (A) in the context of the argument.

(E), on the other hand, can go both ways. Because it says "most" of those who died had seat belts on, we automatically think it supports the argument - but there's also a way to read it that could confuse the argument even more! What if there are proportionately MORE people than ever who wore seat belts and died anyway? That would be a problem for us, wouldn't it? If, before the laws, 60% ("most") of the people didn't wear seat belts, and now 55% (still "most") don't wear seat belts, where does that leave us? This answer choice is ambiguous, so we have to throw it out.

[bearknowsthetrooth]

I chose A because I didn't think I could make the assumption that higher speed limit --> more fatalities. I feel like I've seen other questions on the LSAT where the wrong answer involved making assumptions that most people would consider very basic/obvious. I guess my question is -- when is it ok to make these types of assumptions and when is it not?

And if as E states, most of the people killed in accidents weren't wearing seat belts, doesn't that mean most of them weren't complying with the law? It's possible that the law had no effect on traffic fatalities because the city has a higher than average % of drivers who don't follow traffic laws. Not the best alternative explanation, but still more convincing for me than A is.

[etwcho]

I had a different approach to this question. Upon the first read-through, all answers seemed to be......answers So I ended up picking out a difference between the correct and the wrong answers.

Author said there's a discrepancy between A(national phenomenon) and B(unusual circumstance in a particular city)

So in comparing National(or state, anything bigger than a city geographically) vs City, it seemed intuitive that the answers had to explain certain special circumstances in the city as a WHOLE that elicited such paradox.

A, B, C and D all describe a change to the city as whole vs E, which describes change to the part of the city.
A) City-wide speed increase
B) City-wide regulation change
C) City-wide traffic increase
D) Lack of city-wide enforcement
E) Of the people not wearing seatbelts (which is equivalent to some people in the city), most died. Definitely not a city-wide phenomenon.

Please let me know how this approach fairs.

[onguyen228]

For this question, I looked for answers that counter the effectiveness of the law, or an answer choices that show the law wasn't compiled with. Also, I noticed a shift from percentage to number. 7 percent decrease, but the number remained the same. So I was thinking that there must be an increase in percentage elsewhere which resulted in the same total number of traffic fatalities.

(A) Since the law was enacted speed limit increased. So, it could be that the city's traffic fatalities did decrease by 7 percent but the speed limit increased also increased traffic fatalities by the same amount.

(B) At some point since the law was enacted pedestrian fatalities were included. So, it could be that the city's traffic fatalities did decrease by 7 percent, but the addition of the pedestrians fatalities increased the total by the same amount.

(C) Since the law was enacted, an increase in traffic occurred. So, it could be that the city's traffic fatalities did decrease by 7 percent, but the increase in volume of drivers increased the total of traffic fatalities by the same amount. Recall that when the stimulus referred to the safety report the expectation of traffic fatalities declining is of 7 percent, but the city's public safety records reveals that the number of deaths per year remained the same. So there is a shift of percentage to number here (7% decrease in fatalities and increase in volume results in the same deaths per year).

(D) Since the law was enacted, few drivers compiled with it. This action counters the expected effect of the law enacted. Recall in the stimulus that the safety report was based in areas where the laws were strict, and when referring to the public safety records all it said was that the law was in effect for two years. There is no indication that the strictness was equivalent.

(E) Within the time frame of the law enacted, most of the people killed in the car accidents were not wearing seat belts. Notice that this doesn't really explain a change or counters the effect of the law enacted, rather, at most it is revealing the statistic of the public safety record instead of describing the condition of the city drivers as a whole. It can be seen as a tempting answer choice if you assume that since most people who were killed weren't wearing a seat belt that they were not following the law which is why there is a discrepancy in the reports. But as previous posters mentioned, it is out of scope. For this answer to be correct it would have to be written like (D) describing that most drivers in the city did not wear seat belts.

[Mab6q]

To add to the discussion of E, I thought I might add this. When it comes to paradox question, you want to think of the expected result vs. the unexpected result. In this case, we expect the city to follow the other cities in lowering fatalities, but the outcome, the unexpected result, is that there was no decline.

Looking at E, if we know that most people killed weren't wearing a seat-belt, it adds nothing to the expected vs. unexpected discussion. Maybe this is true for the other cities as well, and maybe this was the case 2 years ago as well. It simply adds nothing to show why the overall number of fatalities did not decrease. If anything, this creates a bigger paradox. If most of the people who get killed don't wear seat-belts, and this laws requires everyone to do so, why wouldn't the number of fatalities decrease.