41.3.26

I completely missed this question. I thought B was very unattractive, and I confidently eliminated it during the test and during BR. I would appreciate it if someone just completely dismantled my reasoning because I don't understand how my reasoning is wrong on this:

Some people think that highway speed limits should be increased to reflect the actual speeds of drivers (which are higher than current speed limits). This increase would greatly decrease saftey since higher average speeds would result. Most violators would obey the new law and almost all of the people that obey the current speed limit would increase their speed.

What I am looking for: This is a very hard passage to understand. The support for the conclusion is that higher average speeds would result since most violators would obey the new law (either increase, decrease, or stay the same speed depending on how much the speed was increased) and current law abiding drivers would increase their speed. The argument is flawed because we don’t know the magnitude of the change. What if the speed limit is increased by 1 MPH? Almost all law abiding citizens could increase by 1 MPH and the most fast drivers could decrease by 15 MPH (if you assume that they were driving very fast). So, it is possible that the average speed actually decreases!

Answer A: This is consistent with the argument since “almost all” (in other words “some won’t) increase their speed.

Answer B: IDK, I still am very skeptical that this weakens the argument. Where does the argument imply or give evidence that uniformity of speed is important? I have a feeling that the author would just say “so what?” to this. Also, the argument doesn’t talk about what a “low speed” is. The argument is talking about “higher vs. lower” speeds. This answer choice seems to making a “relative vs. absolute” flaw that we talked about during the 7sage course. The argument says that some of the drivers (“almost all” idea like in answer choice A) are not going to increase their speed, so there won’t be “uniformity” of speed because some are still going to be below the speed limit. I just feel like the author would respond by saying “dude, you just helped my argument! The speeds aren’t going to be uniform!” Additionally, I don’t see how JY assumes that a shift in the distribution now becomes a narrower distribution. Can someone break this one down?

Answer C: So what? Just because you haven’t been involved in an accident doesn’t mean your danger level has decreased.

Answer This is consistent with the argument, so it is not a weakener. The author says that most will obey the law, which could imply that some will still not.

Answer E: Is believing what is safe the same as actual saftey? What if the violators are very risk loving?