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Passengers must exit airplanes swiftly after accidents, since gases released following accidents are toxic to humans and often explode soon after being released. In order to prevent passenger deaths from gas inhalation, safety officials recommend that passengers be provided with smoke hoods that prevent inhalation of the gases.
Which of the following, if true, constitutes the strongest reason to require implementation of the safety officials' recommendation?
A Strengthen question! We are asked to support the safety officials’ recommendation to implement smoke hoods. Why?
Hm, we are told from the stimulus that:
- Passengers need to exit airplanes quickly because of the toxic gases released.
- To prevent death via gas, officials want to make smoke hoods a requirement. (Is this a safety precaution? How fast do these gases release? Or explode?)
To strengthen this recommendation, it might be good to know that passengers walk really slow? Or the crowd makes it so that some people can’t get out that quickly?
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(A) Test evacuations showed that putting on the smoke hoods added considerably to the overall time it took passengers to leave the cabin.
This answer choice tells us that smoke hoods increase time to leave the cabin. Increasing time would mean that passengers would be exposed to more toxic gases, so this answer choice would weaken the argument! This is an opposite answer choice.
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(B) Some airlines are willing to buy the smoke hoods even though they consider them to be prohibitively expensive.
We are trying to strengthen the practicality of the plan. It’s great that SOME airlines are willing to buy the hoods, but it doesn’t seem like the strongest support. How will it affect the passengers?
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(C) Although the smoke hoods protect passengers from the toxic gases, they can do nothing to prevent the gases from igniting.
This answer choice, like (A), weakens the officials’ recommendation. If the smoke hoods can’t stop ignition….(and combustion), why are we recommending it so strongly?
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(D) Some experienced flyers fail to pay attention to the safety instructions given on every commercial flight before takeoff.
This answer choice isn’t really tied to our argument. It discusses “experienced flyers” and “commercial flights” when we’re discussing all airplanes.
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(E) In many airplane accidents, passengers who were able to reach emergency exits were overcome by toxic gases before they could exit the airplane.
This is the correct answer choice. It strengthens the officials’ recommendation because it argues that because passengers exit slowly, the smoke hoods are beneficial!