LSAT 5 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q10

LR Question 10 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Auto industry executive: Statistics show that cars that were…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Car makers should not be required to produce cars with higher fuel efficiency.

REASONING: When automakers built smaller, fuel efficient cars, those cars had more fatal accidents than did earlier, larger cars.

ANALYSIS: The auto executive attempts to show that fuel efficiency automatically leads to death, because it requires smaller cars.

To weaken this argument, we could show that smaller cars are no longer dangerous. Or we could show that there are other ways to make more efficient cars apart from making them smaller.

___________

1. It would be very weird if larger cars had no accidents. The main thing is that they had fewer accidents than smaller cars.
2. The number of accidents is not the main concern: smaller cars had a higher rate (incidence) of accidents. I care about how likely I am to get in an accident, not how many accidents there are, total.
3. CORRECT. This shows that you could make cars fuel efficient without making them smaller or more dangerous.
4. But will the small cars still be dangerous? That was the auto-maker’s main concern.
5. This shows the need for better efficiency. But it doesn’t weaken the argument that we would have to trade away safety to get more efficient cars.

Recap: The question begins with “Auto industry executive: Statistics show that cars that were”. It is a Weaken question. Learn more about LSAT Weaken questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.