LSAT 137 – Section 3 – Question 21

LSAT 137 - Section 3 - Question 21

October 2012

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT137 S3 Q21
+LR
+Exp
Strengthen +Streng
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
Quantifier +Quant
A
8%
157
B
16%
161
C
13%
163
D
4%
158
E
59%
166
148
160
171
 +Hardest 146.416 +SubsectionMedium

Safety consultant: Judged by the number of injuries per licensed vehicle, minivans are the safest vehicles on the road. However, in carefully designed crash tests, minivans show no greater ability to protect their occupants than other vehicles of similar size do. Thus, the reason minivans have such a good safety record is probably not that they are inherently safer than other vehicles, but rather that they are driven primarily by low-risk drivers.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that the good safety record of minivans is probably due to their being driven primarily by low-risk drivers. This is based on the fact that in crash tests, minivans showed no greater ability to protect occupants than other vehicles of similar size do.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that there’s no other explanation for the better safety record of minivans besides their being driven primarily by low-risk drivers. For example, the author overlooks that other cars that drive near minivans might drive more safely because of the minivan’s presence.

A
When choosing what kind of vehicle to drive, low-risk drivers often select a kind that they know to perform particularly well in crash tests.
It’s not clear whether the average person buying a car knows anything about how minivans perform in crash tests. In any case, minivans don’t perform particularly well compared to other cars, so (A) doesn’t help establish the author’s theory.
B
Judged by the number of accidents per licensed vehicle, minivans are no safer than most other kinds of vehicles are.
If anything, this might weaken the argument, because we would expect that cars driven primarily by low-risk drivers should have fewer accidents per vehicle than other cars. (B) indicates this expectation isn’t met.
C
Minivans tend to carry more passengers at any given time than do most other vehicles.
This helps establish that minivans are the safest vehicles. More passengers per vehicle combined with fewest injuries per vehicle is strong evidence of safety. But it doesn’t reveal anything about the cause of this safety; is it the vehicle itself or the kind of driver?
D
In general, the larger a vehicle is, the greater its ability to protect its occupants.
This suggests part of the reason minivans are safer than other vehicles is their size. If anything, this might weaken by suggesting there are inherent aspects of the minivan that contribute to its safety.
E
Minivans generally have worse braking and emergency handling capabilities than other vehicles of similar size.
This shows the minivan has features that make it inherently less safe than other vehicles. Thus, we have even less reason to believe the minivan’s safety is due to being inherently safer than other cars. This eliminates an alternate explanation for the minivan’s safety.

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LSAT PrepTest 137 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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