Q10 - Auto industry executive: Statistics show

[Shiggins]

The author says no to the regulations that require the production of fuel efficient cars.

His reasoning is the correlation of fuel efficient cars that were in a higher incidence of accidents "compared to large cars."

The cars that were fuel efficient needed to be made small.

What if cars do not need to be made small to be fuel efficient. Answer choice C says this.

My question is that I took the author conclusion as implying that he/she was bringing causation from the correlation. That the fuel efficiency leads to accidents. But I believe the key distinction is the author is overlooking the accident rates between small and large cars. He is only taking his course of action based on the small cars with fuel efficiency. If anyone can help explain, much appreciated.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The author is not mistaking correlation for causation in this question - though this is a common issue in LR. To check for causation look for words implying causality such as: due to, because of, as a result of, induces, causes, has the effect of, contributes to, leads to, etc.

Without language cues implying causality, I'd be hesitant to go in the direction of correlation vs causation..

In this case, the author is suggesting that fuel efficient cars need to be small cars, and has failed to consider that one might achieve fuel efficiency in cars that do not have the drawback of higher fatality rates. So you're absolutely correct in suggesting that the author has failed to consider that we could simply achieve fuel efficiency in large cars - as answer choice (C) points out. Making answer choice (C) correct.

Let's look at the incorrect answers:

(A) is consistent with the auto industry executive's argument. He/She never suggested that large cars were never involved in accidents that were fatal, just that the rate for large cars that were involved in such accidents was lower than than that for small cars.
(B) is irrelevant. The number of accidents is not the concern for the auto industry executive, but rather the incidence of accidents involving a fatality.
(D) is consistent with the auto industry executive's argument. He/She has already suggested that small cars can be made very fuel efficient - though the fact that they are more fuel efficient than at any point in history does not address the incidence of fatality.
(E) somewhat supports the auto industry executive's argument, in that it makes it more difficult to produce safe, fuel efficient cars.

Hope that helps!

[seychelles1718]

Why can't we look at this as a causal argument?

[ohthatpatrick]

You definitely can look at this as involving a causal assumption. I think Matt was just pointing out that in doing so, you'll miss what they're really testing on this example, which is "why does higher fuel efficiency HAVE TO ENTAIL smaller cars?"

Basically, we could initially object to the author's assumption that
"BECAUSE the cars are smaller / more fuel-efficient, we got more fatalities."

We could say that there is actually some other reason that fatalities went up
(maybe the speed limit was raised in 1977 .... maybe people started to do more dangerous things while they drove, like eating/texting/etc. ... maybe there were popular movies around 1977 that glamorized fast, reckless driving and people changed their driving behavior)

We could definitely object by saying that the uptick in fatalities was NOT a result of the smaller, more fuel-efficient car.

But even if we DID grant the author that "sure, more people died because the cars were smaller"
we could still argue against his conclusion by saying "let's keep the goal of fuel efficiency and just find a means of getting there that doesn't involve making smaller cars that are more vulnerable to bad crashes".

So causal objections would work, so would distinctions like the one (C) is making.