LR Question 19 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Studies have shown that pedestrians are struck by cars…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: More pedestrians are struck in crosswalks than outside crosswalks, because crosswalks give pedestrians a strong sense of security, and pedestrians fail to look both ways.
REASONING: No evidence is given for the explanation.
ANALYSIS: It might seem odd that I wrote “no evidence is given”. That’s because the conclusion is an explanation for the fact that pedestrians are hit in crosswalks. So the explanation is the conclusion and not evidence. Actual evidence would have been something like “We verified this explanation by observation. We watched crosswalks, and noticed that pedestrians were less likely to look both ways, compared to crossing elsewhere.”
You can weaken the explanation simply by contradicting it or finding an alternate reason. The one that immediately popped to mind for me was that most pedestrians probably cross at crosswalks. If that’s the case, more accidents will happen at crosswalks even if pedestrians are cautious.
___________
- CORRECT. If this is the case, we’d expect most accidents to happen at crosswalks even if pedestrians are careful.
- So? The question was about the proportion of pedestrians struck at crosswalks, not the number. Numbers and proportions are different things.
- This is irrelevant. The argument didn’t say that signal malfunction was a common cause of accidents. This answer could mean that signals have a 0.0001% chance of malfunction, and pedestrians mistakenly believe it’s 0.00001%. Either number is too low to affect things.
- This strengthens the argument because it eliminates an alternate explanation. This could have been the correct answer if it said “Drivers drive more recklessly than average near crosswalks”
- This strengthens the argument by suggesting that it’s normal for safety precautions such as crosswalks to make people less cautious.
More Resources for Weaken Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Weaken questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers weaken questions.
I don’t understand how D strengthens the argument. The conclusion says “Crosswalks give many pedestrians an OVERLY strong sense of security that oncoming cars will follow the signals, and….”
I interpreted this as “Oncoming cars will NOT as likely to follow the signals as pedestrians have thought” (therefore, the pedestrians get hit.) So in order to weaken this, I paraphrased the answer to state something that contradicts this, which is exactly what D states. If drivers are most alert to pedestrians who are in crosswalks, then it weakens the explanation given.
Please help.
>I interpreted this as “Oncoming cars will NOT as likely to follow the signals as pedestrians have thought” (therefore, the pedestrians get hit.)
The main point of that is that PEDESTRIANS are being lax. The argument isn’t saying drivers are lax – it’s just saying drivers are less infallible than pedestrians expect. That is very vague: it could mean drivers obey signals 10% of the time, or 95% of the time. (In the latter case, it could be so if pedestrians expected 100% or 99.9%).
I wouldn’t bet my career on D being a strengthen, but I think it is. The argument is saying pedestrian carelessness is a cause. However, if drivers were particularly reckless with cross-walks compared to locations without them, then that would have been an alternate explanation. D eliminates that explanation.
For this one, I also initially selected D.
This would have been correct if it had said something like “pedestrians have a higher chance of being hit in a crosswalk than out of one.” Drivers being more cautious when approaching crosswalks would undermine the explanation. But it is speaking of purely numbers..it just says they are hit “more often” in crosswalks than out of them. Thus, the fact there there are MORE pedestrians that walk in crosswalks than out of them would be an alternative that would undermine the explanation.