Q23 - Safety expert: Conversing on a cell phone

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Talking on a cell while driving is more dangerous than talking to a passenger.

Evidence: Conversational partner on the phone can't see when things get dangerous, whereas parter in the car usually gets quiet/helpful when things get dangerous.

Answer Anticipation:
We seem to be assuming that it's dangerous if someone's still talking to you while you're driving through a dangerous situation. And we're assuming it's less dangerous if your conversational partner gets quiet or says helful things while you're driving through a dangerous situation.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This seems pretty accurate. "If your conversational partner isn't providing helpful warnings, then hearing from them during a difficult patch of driving makes things more dangerous." That matches the thinking of the author. She clearly thinks the person you're talking to should shut up when the driving gets tough, or else it's more dangerous, but she also leaves room for the idea that the person you're talking to may abandon the conversation but say something helpful about the dangerous driving situation.

(B) This is the opposite of the author's thinking. When we negate it, it strengthens. Our author thinks that a driver who's talking IS substantially more dangerous than a driver who's not talking.

(C) The author isn't discussing or assuming anything about what people "believe".

(D) STRONG wording red flag: "as likely as". Beyond it being too exact to be necessary, this idea would undercut the author's thinking. He thinks that in a dangerous driving situation, it's better to be talking to someone IN the car (because they'll shut up or say something helpful). If their attempt to say something helpful was just as likely to make things worse, it would undercut the idea that THIS is the safer scenario.

(E) We don't know how the author would score this comparison. Her argument is based on the USUAL behavior of passengers (shut up or say something helpful). She would presumably think that the atypical car passenger is more dangerous than the usual one. But she could still believe that talking on a cell phone to a chatty friend is even some bit more dangerous than talking to a chatty passenger in your car.

Takeaway/Pattern: We can tell from the argument that our author thinks the causal-difference-maker of danger is whether your conversational partner keeps on chatting, or gets quiet/helpful. That should get rid of (C) and (D) pretty comfortably. The last three required some more precise analysis. Since (B) and (E) are phrased negatively, they are easy to negate. In each case, the negation actually strengthens the argument. A correct answer, when negated, would badly weaken the argument. It's not wise to negate conditional answers; just diagram them (mentally or physically) and see if they match the argument core.

#officialexplanation

[RaghavS939]

Hi, I wanted some clarity on option A. The question stimulus mentions that conversing on a cell phone while driving is more dangerous than conversing with a passenger in the vehicle. However, option A, mentions that speaking to a driver significantly increases the risk of an accident.

I eliminated option A because of the usage of the word significantly. Even if option A is negated, I feel that it would not break the conclusion in the question stimulus. However, option A without the word significantly would be a necessary assumption.

Kindly correct me if I am missing something/if I am wrong somewhere.

[Laura Damone]

First, sorry this slipped through the cracks. It's been a crazy couple of weeks.

Second, I think you're totally right! I actually took this LSAT because I wanted a crack at the new digital platform and I found this one really challenging for that reason. I do not believe that the expert's argument depends on the increased risk being "significant."

That said, I did ultimately select A because it was the best among bad answers. B doesn't address the most important party: those talking on a cell phone while driving. C is a generality about belief. We certainly don't need to assume that. And D and E go against the argument. Yes, the degree of A is problematic, but less so than the issues in the other answers.

It is far more common to see a situation like this - 5 answers that all seem wrong - in strengthen, weaken, explain a result, and most strongly supported questions. All of these question stems give you wiggle room because they say "most strengthens" or "best explains." So, if the right answer doesn't really strengthen but it's better than the rest of them, well, fine. It still strengthens the most out of the 5. In all the LSAT's that I've taken, I've never seen this happen in a Nec Assum question. I fully intend to submit this as an error to LSAC.

[Ajb349]

There's been a couple LR questions on this exam that are completely off the rails, including this one. This seems to be a shift in the culture of this section of the LSAT.

[BarryM800]

I can't really make sense of (A) being the correct answer - "Speaking to a driver during a difficult driving situation significantly increases the risk of an accident, unless the speaker is providing helpful warnings." "Unless" introduces a necessary condition, but is it necessary that the passenger provides helpful warnings? The stimulus gave us another option - "be quiet." Also, what is "helpful warnings"? Are we then assuming that the passenger is a superior driver, or even knows how to drive in the first place? Even if it's factually "helpful," we all have the experience of having a "backseat driver" in the car. Personally, nothing would annoy me more than that, when I want to concentrate on my driving.

[Laura Damone]

Hi there!

You're correct that the stimulus gives us two options for passengers in the car when the driver faces a difficult situation: helpful warnings and being quiet. But being quiet doesn't apply in answer choice A, because answer choice A is specifically about speaking to a driver in a difficult situation.

The argument core looks like this:

premise: passengers in the car give helpful warnings or shut up when driving becomes difficult
premise: people on the other end of a cell phone call can't see when driving becomes difficult
conclusion: conversing on a cell phone is more dangerous than conversing with a passenger

A is correct because it bridges the gap between speaking during a difficult driving situation and danger: talking increases danger. But without the "unless" clause, that would apply to all talking—cell phone talking and passenger talking. In order to conclude that cell phone talking is more dangerous, we need the answer not to apply to passenger talking. When we add the unless clause, we establish that it doesn't apply to passenger talking, since passengers speaking during a difficult driving situation will usually be providing helpful warnings.

If you want to take a conditional approach to the answer, you could think of it like so:
speaking during diff. sitch doesn't increase accident risk --> helpful warnings

To apply the negation test, since this is a Necessary Assumption question, you'd demonstrate that the sufficient condition can exist without the necessary condition:
speaking during diff. sitch doesn't increase accident risk even if that speaking isn't helpful warnings

Well, if that's the case, the argument falls apart, because we can no longer prove that cell phone talking is more dangerous than passenger talking. Make sense?

One last thing: be careful not to bring too many real world opinions into the world of the LSAT. Sure, we all hate backseat drivers, but thinking about them doesn't help us analyze this argument. It's just a distraction!

[WilliamS670]

For reasons already outlined, (A) is not a necessary assumption. If (A) is worded cleanly, i.e. doesn't include the NA-destroying modifier 'significantly', not only do I not get this question wrong, I probably correctly answer at least two of the remaining three questions I got wrong on the section, because I don't spend an extra 90 seconds spinning my wheels on this flawed question. This has to be a transcription error. The incompetence is too flagrant for it not to be.

[AshleyT786]

The thing I didn't like about A was that it talked about significantly increasing rather than just increasing. Since the conclusion is a comparative between talking on the cell phone versus with a passenger, if A were negated, wouldn't it still be possible for the argument to be valid because NOT significantly increasing could just mean increasing by a little right?

[christine.trg]

First, sorry this slipped through the cracks. It's been a crazy couple of weeks.

Second, I think you're totally right! I actually took this LSAT because I wanted a crack at the new digital platform and I found this one really challenging for that reason. I do not believe that the expert's argument depends on the increased risk being "significant."

That said, I did ultimately select A because it was the best among bad answers. B doesn't address the most important party: those talking on a cell phone while driving. C is a generality about belief. We certainly don't need to assume that. And D and E go against the argument. Yes, the degree of A is problematic, but less so than the issues in the other answers.

It is far more common to see a situation like this - 5 answers that all seem wrong - in strengthen, weaken, explain a result, and most strongly supported questions. All of these question stems give you wiggle room because they say "most strengthens" or "best explains." So, if the right answer doesn't really strengthen but it's better than the rest of them, well, fine. It still strengthens the most out of the 5. In all the LSAT's that I've taken, I've never seen this happen in a Nec Assum question. I fully intend to submit this as an error to LSAC.

Hi Laura, did LSAC ever reply on its usage of "significantly" in the credited response?