Q2 - A large number of drivers

[u2manish]

Can someone please walk us through this question. I did manage to get it right by POE but i cant follow the reasoning of (C).
Please think of us as a layman on this particular one...!

Thanks...!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Good question! The argument concludes that if we were to install devices that prevent cars from exceeding the speed limit that most car accidents would be prevented. The evidence for this is that most car accidents involve cars traveling faster than the speed limit - which they say is major factor in creating those accidents.

On the surface, this argument seems pretty decent. I'd be a little concerned that just because you take away one of the contributing factors, that you may not actually prevent the accident. But that's not where the correct answer takes us. Instead it points out the possibility that sometimes going faster than the speed limit may also prevent accidents. If that's the case, then not only will preventing cars from traveling faster than the speed limit prevent some accidents, but it will also cause some accidents - thereby creating the possibility that we would not prevent most car accidents. By eliminating the possibility that cars need to drive faster than the speed limit to prevent accidents, answer choice (C) protects the argument from something that would undermine its reasoning.

Let's look at the incorrect answers:

(A) is irrelevant, since the argument never alludes to who would be installing the devices to prevent cars from driving faster than the speed limit.
(B) is irrelevant, since it could be the case that for those inexperienced drivers it is driving faster than the speed limit that creates the accident.
(D) is irrelevant, since intention does not play a role here. Whether the cars drive faster than the speed limit intentionally or not, does not prevent the devices from working as suggested.
(E) is irrelevant, since by suggesting that some other way of preventing the accidents would not work, it is not implied that the suggested method of preventing accidents would work.

Hope that helps!

[u2manish]

Cheers..great work. I was hovering around the right way to think about it and you helped formulating it. Thanks again..!

[changtj]

I am having difficulty trying to negate answer choice (c). Should this be interpreted as a conditional?

[rinagoldfield]

Great questions, Changtj. We should interpret (C) as a conditional; the word “when” indicates that. When negating a conditional statement, negate the necessary condition.

For example, “every boy loves pasta” is negated as “every boy does not love pasta.” In diagrammatic terms, we negate B --> LP by finding a B who ~LP.

(C) gives us:

No other drivers are violating speed limit (…) --> a driver SELDOM needs to exceed the speed limit (…)

We negate this to:

No other drivers are violating speed limit (…) --> a driver OFTEN needs to exceed the speed limit (…)

Hope this helps!