The faster a car is traveling, the less time the driver has to avoid a potential accident, and if a car does crash, higher speeds increase the risk of a fatality. Between 1995 and 2000, average highway speeds increased significantly in the United States, yet, over that time, there was a drop in the number of car-crash fatalities per highway mile driven by cars.

Which of the following, if true about the United States between 1995 and 2000, most helps to explain why the fatality rate decreased in spite of the increase in average highway speeds?

(A) The average number of passengers per car on highways increased.

(B) There were increases in both the proportion of people who wore seat belts and the proportion of cars that were equipped with airbags as safety devices.

(C) The increase in average highway speeds occurred as legal speed limits were raised on one highway after another.

(D) The average mileage driven on highways per car increased.

(E) In most locations on the highways, the density of vehicles on the highway did not decrease, although individual vehicles, on average, made their trips more quickly.

GMATPrep Code : VCR005853

Hi, Let me see if I can help.

What is the question saying:

If all else is equal faster cars = more deaths

BUT cars in America travelled faster, and there were less deaths.

We need to solve that puzzle.

First up - use a bit of logic. What do you know about Cars and safety over time? It's pretty well known that car safety improved. That's a good indicator of something to look for.

B provides exactly that - a reason why people crashing at high speeds may actually be better protected than we would expect. It is the correct answer

As for E, does it help you answer the puzzle? No - it gives no reason why cars in crashes would be better/worse off. It's irrelevant to the question

Hope that helps.

James

The faster a car is travelling, the less time the driver has to avoid a potential accident, and if a car does crash, higher speeds increase the risk of a fatality. Between 1995 and 2000, average highway speeds increased significantly in the United States, yet, over that time, there was a drop in the number of car-crash fatalities per highway mile driven by cars.

Which of the following, if true about the United States between 1995 and 2000, most helps to explain why the fatality rate decreased in spite of the increase in average highway speeds?

(A) The average number of passengers per car on highways increased - In this case, Fatalities should have increase instead of decreasing.
(B) There were increases in both the proportion of people who wore seat belts and the proportion of cars that were equipped with airbags as safety devices - Correct. Both factors would have decreased the chances of fatalities
(C) The increase in average highway speeds occurred as legal speed limits were raised on one highway after another - Same as A.
(D) The average mileage driven on highways per car increased - Irrelevant
(E) In most locations on the highways, the density of vehicles on the highway did not decrease, although individual vehicles, on average, made their trips more quickly - OFS

Kudos please....
_________________

Hard-work, Perseverance and Commitment.....

Hellounparadise ,
Fatality rate calculation per mile is not applicable here.

The passage says : accidents have increased and fatality rate has gone down .
What can be derived from this conclusion .
Cars have becomes better .They have more safety features.


Now look at the options :
Option B says:There were increases in both the proportion of people who wore seat belts and the proportion of cars that were equipped with airbags as safety devices.

This is the only option which explains the paradox.
_________________

Regards,
Manish Khare
"Every thing is fine at the end. If it is not fine ,then it is not the end "

Hi Karishma,

How could we know that the fatality rate (or the number of fatalities) will increase proportionally with the increase in mileage driven?

In my flawed reasoning, I just simply put the increased denominator, which is the mileage driven (assuming the same number of cars), in the rate formula and consequently concluded that fatality rate increases.

Please correct me. Really appreciate your help.

This is a paradox question. The average highway speed increased and high speed ideally should lead to higher number of fatalities; yet the number of fatalities was less. Why is that so? It has no correlation with mileage. As suggested in "B" that people took extra safety precautions and even cars were equipped with more advanced safety measures. Hence assuming though there were accidents fatalities were less because of the safety measures. Hence "B" resolves the paradox.
_________________

Aryama Dutta Saikia
Jamboree Education Pvt. Ltd.

Hi MrSobe17,

I had the same question as you, but after reading the explanation by Karishma I realize some things. Here are my thoughts on it:

1. We put some math in here. Remember Work-Rate problems in Quant? The stem is talking about RATE, right? What I know about rate is that if the denominator increases, the numerator has to increase proportionally in order to maintain the same rate. Although we are not explicitly told that the rate of death-to-mile remains the same, it is reasonable to think that the rate will not change. For example, I tell you that my accuracy rate when doing Data Sufficiency problems is 80%. Yesterday I did only 10 DS questions, hence the number of questions I got right is 8. Now I told you that today I have done 50 DS problems, you notice that the denominator sharply increases, right? But do you think I got only 2 out of 50 questions correct? (Sounds like I am a DS geek?) Probably not, because the more problems I do, the more incorrect answers I give. My accuracy rate will not change significantly in 1 day unless something SPECIAL happens.

Now, back to our death-mile case, it is intuitive to believe that the more miles people drive, the more they are prone to accident. If you only drive occasionally (several times a year), your chance of involving in a car accident is definitely less than when you have to drive long distance every single day for work purpose. So here, people are driving longer distance, so the number of fatilities tends to increase. It makes sense to me.

2. Remember I said my accuracy rate for DS problems will not change overnight unless something SPECIAL happens? Like, I out of the sudden become smarter, or the problem set I solved this morning includes hint attached to every question. Here, in this CR question, option B offers the special thing. The death-mile rate will not change by itself, but if there are changes in some special relevant other factors like stricter regulations, smarter safer cars, or better roads, the rate may change. This makes sense to you?

I am still calling into question the reasoning behind answers B and D. As for D: the stem has already told us the fatality/mile rate dropped - so it is given, there ARE factors that either impact the numerator or denominator or both - D completes the picture/explains by saying that the denominator increased. Here we are sort of forced to make a slight assumption that the fatality number should have risen at most at a lower rate than the milage driven for the equation to hold true. BUT the stem clearly says the rate is down, it is guaranteed ---> so combined with answer D we get the full picture.

As for A: I can find a number of reasons to challenge B. Automakers are lying (as we see with many recent cases) to consumers as regards features of the cars - so wearing a seatbelt does not result into a saved life. I have a friend who luckily avoided a fatality although the airbag did not jump out as should have as per the car specifications. All the people who wear seatbelts can be driving old rusty cars where seatbelt does not hold. There are numerous ways to challenge the B. If we accept the B as the right answer then we should accept that we also are making an additional assumption to make the B true: that the seatbelts and airbags are really working.
_________________

KUDO me plenty

Completely agree with you. For B to be true, it has to be assumed that seatbelts and aribags do work. I was under the impression that it is not right to assume anything out of what is stated in the answer choices in CR. Apparently it is not so... Also, seatbelts' utility is not obvious or general knowledge, such as water being transparent. Weird answer.

Im in the same basket as you are , again one of the dirt games of GMAC, they rule, when they like to make assumption more than necessary is ok but we, so it is on their mersy how they did set up the algoritam on the test day to give you a correct or wrong answer consequently your score and you destiny depends on them. I did another question with weird reasoning.
this is the question:
an-influential-stock-analyst-recommends-the-purchase-224662.html

go ahead and dismiss A. GMAC asume that workers were working and reading at the same time ??????????????????????????? GMAC can assume but can we

like in the question above, D is more relaible and clean answer without any assumptions, just clean formula to consider and there you go. but no this time GMAC likes assumption not warranted in the paragraph??????????? go figure out what they want