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A recent survey of all auto accident victims in Dole County found that, of the severely injured drivers and front-seat passengers, 80 percent were not wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents. This indicates that, by wearing seat belts, drivers and front-seat passengers can greatly reduce their risk of being severely injured if they are in an auto accident.
The conclusion above is not properly drawn unless which of the following is true?
(A) Of all the drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey, more than 20 percent were wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents.
(B) Considerably more than 20 percent of drivers and front-seat passengers in Dole County always wear seat belts when traveling by car.
(C) More drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey than rear-seat passengers were very severely injured.
(D) More than half of the drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey were not wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents.
(E) Most of the auto accidents reported to police in Dole County do not involve any serious injury.
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Manager
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B?
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Manager
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stolyar wrote: A recent survey of all auto accident victims in Dole County found that, of the severely injured drivers and front-seat passengers, 80 percent were not wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents. This indicates that, by wearing seat belts, drivers and front-seat passengers can greatly reduce their risk of being severely injured if they are in an auto accident.
The conclusion above is not properly drawn unless which of the following is true?
(A) Of all the drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey, more than 20 percent were wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents.
(B) Considerably more than 20 percent of drivers and front-seat passengers in Dole County always wear seat belts when traveling by car.
(C) More drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey than rear-seat passengers were very severely injured.
(D) More than half of the drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey were not wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents.
(E) Most of the auto accidents reported to police in Dole County do not involve any serious injury.
(B), I agree
(A) contradicts the stimulus
(D) restates something in the stimulus
(E) and (C) are outside scope
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Senior Manager
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seatbelts n' stuff [#permalink]
 26 Jun 2003, 20:30
Boy! this is a tough one!!
It seems to me that the problem is that we don't know if the people, who didn't get seriously injured, were wearing setbelts or not.
If those people who didn't get hurt were not wearing seatbelts, and if they represent a critical mass, then wearing setbelts does not reduce the risk of getting hurt (because we have a bunch of people who didn't wear it and didn't get hurt).
B seems incorrect to me because it talks about the people of the town and not about the people surveyed.
I am between A and D... eventually I would choose D because it suggests that from all people surveyed (hurt and not hurt) almost half were wearing seatbelts.
So my choice is D.... 
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SVP
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Let us forget about it. I took the test thrice and did never see such questions.
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Senior Manager
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No way man!!! I NEED the answer. How am I going to sleep tonight not knowing if I would've gotten the question wright or wrong if I were taking the real thing? 
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Re: forget about it? [#permalink]
27 Jun 2003, 15:42
MartinMag wrote: No way man!!! I NEED the answer. How am I going to sleep tonight not knowing if I would've gotten the question wright or wrong if I were taking the real thing? OK...but please don't pick (D).
* The stimulus reads "80 percent were not wearing seat belts."
* D reads "More than half were not wearing seat belts."
(D) is a trivial restatement of something that's already in the passage. So is (A), for a similar reason. So these are not assumptions, rather, they are evidence.
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Senior Manager
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Re: forget about it? [#permalink]
27 Jun 2003, 19:00
JP wrote: MartinMag wrote: No way man!!! I NEED the answer. How am I going to sleep tonight not knowing if I would've gotten the question wright or wrong if I were taking the real thing? OK...but please don't pick (D). * The stimulus reads "80 percent were not wearing seat belts." * D reads "More than half were not wearing seat belts." (D) is a trivial restatement of something that's already in the passage. So is (A), for a similar reason. So these are not assumptions, rather, they are evidence. You are missing some "precious" information from the stimulus:
" of the severely injured drivers and front-seat passengers, 80 percent were not wearing seat belts"
The 80 % is referring to the people injured only, not the total of the sample. For example, if 100 people were surveyed and 20 of those where severly injured, then the stimulus tells us that 16 persons were not wearing setbelts.
Answer D:
"More than half of the drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey were not wearing seat belts"
Here we are talking about the total of the people surveyed (hurt and not hurt). Which means, in relation to the example I presented above, that more than 50 persons were not wearing set belts (and not only 16 as the stimulus suggested).
So D is clearly not a trivial restatement, it actually presents more valuable information.
Same thing with answer A. It also refers to the total of the sample.
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Gotcha. I had to really read it closely to see that there was a larger group of people and then a subset of .
I think it has to be (D) rather than (A) - after all it could be either more than 20% or equal to 20% (equal in the event that 100% of the respondents were seriously injured).
Nice catch.
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yeah... cool
An algebraic approach...
100 - total people surveyed got an accident
X of those - were severely injured
0.8X of those - were not wearing seat belts
D) says that more than 50 people were nor wearing belts
0.8X=50
X=62.5 - the number of people of severely injured
If 20 people were not wearing the belts (wearing more), then 0.8X=20; X=25 (less severely injured)
So, the concusion of the passage is corroborated. Wearing seat belts reduces the cases significantly.
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I think it is (B).
Let's assume that only 20% of people where seat belts. Since seat belts do not CAUSE accidents, we can assume that people that get into accident will has the same ratio of seat belt wearers to non seat belt wearers. Hence, it WOULD BE EXPECTED that 80% of the accidents would involve those not wearing seat belts. However, if much more that 20% wear seat belts, then if the number of people in accidents who do not have belts on is 80%, that would be disproportionate to the general pool of people, hence strengtheni9ng the conclusion.
As a corollary, suppose only 1% of the population wore seat beats. Then the 20% of those found wearing seat belts in an accident would be disproportionately LARGE and one could reasonably conclude that WEARING SEAT BELTS actually causes the injuries!!!
Hence, the simple fact that 80% of accident victims did not wear seat belts is not enough by itself to conclude that seat belts work, but rather whether or not this proportion is disproportionate to the general population is.
B is the only one that seems to show this disproportionality.
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Former Senior Instructor, Manhattan GMAT and VeritasPrep
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MFE, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, Class of 2005
MBA, Anderson School of Management, UCLA, Class of 1993
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I think it is c.
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stolyar wrote: A recent survey of all auto accident victims in Dole County found that, of the severely injured drivers and front-seat passengers, 80 percent were not wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents. This indicates that, by wearing seat belts, drivers and front-seat passengers can greatly reduce their risk of being severely injured if they are in an auto accident.
The conclusion above is not properly drawn unless which of the following is true?
(A) Of all the drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey, more than 20 percent were wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents.
(B) Considerably more than 20 percent of drivers and front-seat passengers in Dole County always wear seat belts when traveling by car.
(C) More drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey than rear-seat passengers were very severely injured.
(D) More than half of the drivers and front-seat passengers in the survey were not wearing seat belts at the time of their accidents.
(E) Most of the auto accidents reported to police in Dole County do not involve any serious injury. Answer has to be D & nothing else.
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If more drivers and front-seat passengers are severely hurt than are rear-seat passengers, then the 80% of the severely hurt will be higher which translates to a higher no. of severely hurt Drivers and front-seat passengers that were not wearing seat belts. Therefore, it is more convincing to assume that wearing seat belts would make a significant difference in the outcome.
According to me it should be C.
D- more than half were injured is not the question. The question to ask is: how many or what % of them were seriously hurt. The "seriously hurt" pool is what will help us in determining if wearing seat belts will help avoid serious injuries. In that context, D actually weakens the argument. If say 70% hurt were drivers and front-seat passengers and of them 90% were not wearing seat belts and were not severely hurt, then wearing belts would not have significant impact!
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i would say C because the conclusion is that people can prevent accidents by wearing seat belts. and it would be true only when we know that people in front seat are more vulnerable.
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