#17 - A safety report indicates that, on average, traffic

[lilmissunshine]

I did want to ask a question about #17. Is answer choice (E) incorrect because it's irrelevant?

[Adam Tyson]

I'm not sure I would say it was irrelevant, lilmissunshine, but it certainly doesn't resolve the paradox here because it tells us nothing about why this is happening. Why are fatalities the same even after the seat belt law went into place, when the safety report suggests that they should have gone down? Answer E tells us only that of the people who died, most apparently weren't complying with the law. But why weren't they fewer in number? Why were they not complying? This answer leaves us still wondering, instead of saying "oh, okay, now I understand", which is how we should react to an answer that does resolve the paradox. Think of Resolve answers as being causal - they give us the cause for the odd, unexpected effect in the stimulus. Answer E tells us nothing about the cause, but only some details about some of the effects.

Try that causal approach on your next Resolve question and see if that makes sense!

[lilmissunshine]

Thank you (again) Adam!

[mneh]

Could someone explain why (A) is incorrect? I don't understand how the increased speed limits explain the discrepancy here.

[Adam Tyson]

Keep in mind that the question stem asks us to eliminate the answers that HELP to resolve the paradox, mneh. None of those wrong answers needs to completely resolve it, but only contribute to an explanations.

Answer A helps two ways, one very general and one very specific. In general, in a Resolve question, the answers that help to resolve the paradox will be somehow causal - they will tell us what brought about the odd situation. In this case, anything special that happened in those two years related to traffic fatalities, something that correlates with the odd data we are trying to understand, might be a potential cause for the odd outcome. The fact that the speed limits were raised at the same time the seat belt laws went into effect should make us wonder whether the higher speed limit might be the cause of the surprisingly high fatality rate.

More specifically, the authors expect us to consider the possibility that cars driving faster might be more deadly to their occupants and others when they crash! Could a 15kph increase in speed be the difference between surviving a crash or not, even for those wearing their seat belt? Perhaps, and that's not an unreasonable leap to make. Passengers got safer by putting on their seat belts, but then that safety advantage was offset by the danger of higher speed limits.

Look for causes in Resolve answers, and that may make things a little easier!

[Legallyconfused]

Hi there,

How is D different than E?

Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

We're trying to find and eliminate answers that help explain why the death rate has remained the same in the city despite the new seat belt law. If answer E is true, it still doesn't explain why the death rate didn't drop the way it was supposed to! It's "of those who died, most weren't wearing the seat belts", but that tells us nothing about how many people, or what percentage, wear them. It only tells us that most of the dead folks didn't wear them - it could be that everyone else did wear them, and we are still left wondering why the rate of deaths didn't drop.