Traffic Safety Expert: In order to achieve a substantial reduction in

Another, good question to use to practice focusing on the exact scope of the conclusion as given (rather than information we know from the real world).

The traffic expert’s argument can be summed up as follows:
Radical incentives to encourage safe driving (no seat belts, electroshocks for speeding)->Substantially reduced # of car accidents

This is an assumption question, and you might have recognized right away that there is a logical gap between the language used in the GOAL (reduced ACCIDENTS) and the premises (incentives for SAFE DRIVING)…we might think, based on our own preexisting assumptions, that unsafe driving is always linked to accidents, but that’s not necessarily true.

Even if we didn’t recognize that gap, we can still focus very specifically on the wording of the conclusion to get us there.

(A) If many accidents are caused by things OTHER than safe-driving, this would weaken the conclusion, not help support it. Eliminate.

(B) There’s a little word inserted here that’s crucial—“all fatal car accidents.” We’ve shifted the scope from “the number of car accidents” to “fatal car accidents”—these are not comparable groups. Little words, especially near the ends of sentences, can be super important on the GMAT. Eliminate.

(C) The phrase “significant number” is helpful here, since we want to “substantially” decrease the number of accidents. This answer choice also links the accidents to the unsafe practices addressed by the crazy incentives. Hold onto it, but keep going.

(D) What someone “should” or “should not” do is a moral claim, and this choice is therefore out of scope. We want to help prove a factual claim (incentives->reduced accidents). Pay attention to those little words! Eliminate.

(E) We don’t know whether the electroshock systems would be implemented properly. And even if they weren’t, the fact that they could cause heart attacks would probably lead to more accidents, not fewer.

C is the only choice that directly links the language of the conclusion with the language of the premises, so it’s our keeper.