PT37.S2.Q17 - traffic fatalities decline by about 7 percent

dchoi121

The reason why E doesn't help is because E requires us to go one more step to explain why people aren't wearing seat belts?(because they are not obeying the law?)
http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-37-section-2-question-17/

Angelica Pickles

Hi Divon,
Let me take a crack at this one.

The "paradox" boils down to:
1. A seat belt law was passed that should have decreased TF
2. But in city X it didn't (it stayed the same)

These were a few immediate questions that I had:
1) But there are factors other than not wearing your seat belt that can contribute to the #of TF in a city, like speed limit
2) What if people simply didn't obey the law?
3) What if the public safety record isn't accurate/recorded differently than 2 yrs ago?

A) addresses #1
addresses #3
C) addresses #1
D) addresses #2

E) actually doesn't resolve the paradox because of the ambiguity of "most." "Most" can mean anywhere between 51%-100%.
What if before the law was passed 90% (most) of people killed were not wearing seat belts (nwsb). Now, 51% (still most) of the people killed were nwsb. This would suggest that people did obey the law/the law should have lowered #of TF, thus confounding the paradox rather than resolving it.

Hope this made sense. Let me know if you need some clarification!

AnthonyScalia

Wouldn't eliminating A require the assumption that a change in speed limit has any effect on traffic fatalities (and particularly an effect that makes them go up?)

Conventional anecdotes may suggest that faster is more dangerous, but science doesn't support this, and even if it did, we shouldn't have to know either way on the LSAT.

Given that we can't assume that changing the speed limit has any effect on the frequency of traffic fatalities, why can we say that it helps resolve the discrepancy (therefor eliminating it?)