A recent study compared property crime rates

I think the answer here is D. Burglars will steal from areas that they are familiar with and not go out of their way to burglarize. If this is the case then it explains why homes in more traveled areas are broken into more often, vs. less traveled areas, because the burglars are not familiar with the area.

Thoughts? What is the OA?

I took lot of time to fix this concept in my mind..

A recent study compared property crime rates on various streets in a metropolitan city with the amount of traffic on them and their ease of access. Although some believe that burglary is more common in low-trafiic areas,the study showed that a house on a main road was more likely to be burglarized than one of comparable value on a less frequently traveled street requiring many turns to be reached .


need to think why between the bolded things..

A,B, C, E .. as those provide information which is not useful.

D gives us the info that is useful.

Burglars spend most of their time performing routine , non criminal activities and will usually commit crimes on streets they frequently travel

I choose B below is why.Can somebody clarify my doubt ?
The study states that crime rate is high in areas with high amount of traffic and their ease of access.
B) Burglars in metropolitan areas who steal large, bulky items generally drive to the houses they intend to burglarize
B states that burglars needs to drive to those houses to steal large and bulky items but as mentioned in the stem the area with low traffic might be in accessible , there is no place to drive cars(big car or whatever) they drive.

However, D
D)Burglars spend most of their time performing routine , non criminal activities and will usually commit crimes on streets they frequently travel.
The argument says Low traffic and not NO traffic.Lets assume high traffic means 100 cars(ppl)/hour and low means 10 cars(ppl)/hour.And 5 out of 10 cars/ppl are burglars only.and they are spending most of their time performing......in low traffic areas. Hence perform burglaries there only.
Which can be actually contrary to the study and cannot explain it.

We Just need to show why the Burglars steal from high traffic areas.

Since that your doubt is on option B and D. Lets see why B is wrong and D is correct.

Option B: They can drive to any areas- low traffic or high traffic areas which has roads. Simply this doesn't explain why the burglary happens more in high traffic areas.

Option D: Since they spend more time in the High traffic areas. Also it says they spend more time on streets they travel frequently. So these burglars are more likely to steal from high traffic areas. This perfectly explain the contradiction in the stimulus.

Hope it helps .

Thanks for your reply Gnpth but i think you didn't read my doubts so unfortunately i still have them.
Option D)Burglars spend most of their time performing routine , non criminal activities and will usually commit crimes on streets they frequently travel.
The statement mentioned they frequently travel (They is burglars here) and did NOT mention which general public frequently travel. The area can be classified as high traffic areas when the general public frequently travel on that. Low traffic areas still have some traffic which is traveled by not many but few and these few could be burglars (i can safely assume that NOT majority of the people are burglars. So, I dont think that we can infer that the streets about which the statement is referring is high traffic areas.


Argument : The study states that crime rate is high in areas with high amount of traffic and their ease of access.
B) Burglars in metropolitan areas who steal large, bulky items generally drive to the houses they intend to burglarize
B states that burglars needs to drive to those houses to steal large and bulky items but as mentioned in the stem the area with low traffic might be in accessible , there is no road to drive cars(big car or cars with ultra modern wifi,camera,latest weapons ) they drive.

Please point out the flaw in my reasoning.

i totally agree with varun agrawal... and that was the reason i too dropped D and chose B..........
HOW CAN WE ASSUME THAT THE BURGLERS FREQUENT HIGH TRAFFIC AREAS.....it could be that high traffic area has 100 vehicles at all times containing 2 burglers and low traffic areas have 10 vehicles with 8 burglers........how can D be correct..........B may still be acceptable....

semwal & VarunBhardwaj :

In Option B: It says the burglars drive to places they intended to steal, since they drive, they will be able to go to high traffic areas as well as the low traffic areas.

Does this explain why there is high number of theft in high traffic areas or the main road?.

Option D: Says that these burglars do their routine work. It is assumed that since these main roads are most likely be the places where these burglars travel. since they steal from frequently travelled places, the crime is high on these roads(main road) rather than on the low-traffic areas.

Hope it helps .

B) Burglars in metropolitan areas who steal large, bulky items generally drive to the houses they intend to burglarize

the bold section which i have marked talks only about certain burglars so with B.. Hence wont explain much..

this is the only option I was left with when I did POE, as A,C,E i could easily eliminate but B little bit convoluted but add no info to explain the disparity.

I told myself that Burglars - performing routine , non criminal activities - they frequently travel..... given that he is a burglar why he performs non criminal activity in low traffic area..

GMATNinja ExpertsGlobal5 KarishmaB AjiteshArun

Experts, I've read through the posts on this question but still don't understand why B is wrong and D is right.

I can see that Option B states "Burglars who steal large bulky items..." which is talking about this subset of burglars who steal large objects. The argument however is about burglars in general. The question stem states that "...comparable value on a less frequently traveled street requiring many turns to be reached". So I thought this made sense because burglars who are driving can make a quick getaway on a main street.

Option D: I do not understand at all why this is correct. This option talks about burglars committing crimes on the streets THEY frequently travel. But how can we assume that the streets frequented by burglars are those that are generally busy?

I am really struggling with this question so any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Study: A house on a main road was more likely to be burglarized than one of comparable value on a less frequently traveled street requiring many turns to be reached.

What would explain this? How can we explain why burglars hit main road houses more often?

A) Burglars generally avoid residences with home security systems,which are more common in busy metropolitan areas.

This should be a reason to not hit main road houses.

B) Burglars in metropolitan areas who steal large, bulky items generally drive to the houses they intend to burglarize

Burglars drive to the house. A house in a non busy area may actually be easier to drive to because of less traffic though the route may be longer because of many turns. Also, during getaway, it might be easy to lose a trail when there are many turns or it may be easier to drive off the main road. Or due to traffic on main road, getting away may not be easier. The point is we can't say how a location on the main road vs a location that comes after many turns impacts the burglars' plan. At best, we can keep this option in mind for now.

c)Two weeks after a given burglary , the likelihood of another's accruing greatly increases for any house within a half-mile radius

This would be true for either location so irrelevant.

D)Burglars spend most of their time performing routine , non criminal activities and will usually commit crimes on streets they frequently travel.

Correct. This gives us a reason why high frequented streets (main roads) are hit more often. Burglars normally perform routine tasks. They commit crimes on streets they know well. It is much more likely that people visit main roads more frequently (they are more frequently traveled streets) so it is more likely that burglars (say 0.1% of the population) also travel to those more frequently for their routine jobs. Hence these streets are hit more often too.

E)Burglars in urban environments often share information about which neighborhoods they are unlikely to be apprehended in .

We don't know whether main roads are "neighborhoods they are unlikely to be apprehended in"

Answer (D)

Hi UserMaple5,

For houses of comparable value, some people expect burglary to be more common in low-traffic areas than in high-traffic areas. This seems reasonable. Why would a burglar choose a less than optimal risk-reward? The paradox, of course, is that the study found that, for some reason, burglary tends to be more common in high-traffic ares than in low-traffic areas. We need to explain this paradox.

1. You've already identified some of the major issues in B. The information in B is limited to burglars who steal large, bulky items (and driving to their targets, but we won't go there ). Given that we don't know whether there are many such burglars or not, it's harder for us to get to burglary (in general). Now, even if these burglars drive to their target houses, there's no reason to think that they need to stick to the main (high-traffic) roads. It may in fact be easier to get there (and away!) in low-traffic areas.

2. Option D is "burglars spend most of their time performing routine, noncriminal activities and will usually commit crimes on streets they frequently travel". Now, because both "routine activities" and "frequently travel" indicate "high-traffic areas", this option effectively tells us that burglary is generally a crime of opportunity. It's not something that is meticulously planned, where we'd expect burglars to optimise target selection. That's why this option helps us resolve the paradox. It explains why even though some people expect burglary to be more common in low-traffic areas, it is actually more common in high-traffic areas. That's where burglars spend most of their time, and they commit burglary when they get an opportunity to do so.

Hi KarishmaB

How can we assume that the main roads are the roads that the burglars "frequently travel" ? They could very well be the roads in low-traffic areas. The frequently or less-frequently travelled is a property of the roads (in a way). Just because a road is frequently travelled or used, it doesn't necessarily means that those roads would definitely be more travelled by burglars too. What am I missing ? Aren't we implying a causal relationship, which may not be true? As you explained, "it is highly likely" but how can we be 100% sure ?

Note that it all about what is more likely. Houses in secluded areas are burgled, just not as much.

A "main road" by its very definition is one that runs through the shopping centre or business centre or city centre or connects lots of other roads etc. It is a road that is busy, that is frequented by many people many times. If most burglars spend time doing routine things, they would spend time doing things that common people do. So it is likely that they visit main roads often, just like other residents. So it is likely that they are familiar with houses on main roads and hence, they end up burgling those.
It explains why houses on main roads get burgled MORE, relatively speaking.

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