Q7- Automoble manufacturers who began

[jgutella]

As it pertains to correct answer choice (a), how does this exactly strengthen the argument? I understand the implication that because most people have two cars, they may have both of the two types of cars mentioned in the passage: the lighter one for local transportation and the heavier one for long distance travel.

However, (a) doesn't say anything about which types of two vehicles "most members own". So how can we conclude that the two types of vehicles owned by most of these members are the two types mentioned in the passage?

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type: Strengthen

Argument core:

manufacturers made one light car for safe, fuel-efficient, local driving
and one heavy car for safe, less fuel-efficient, long-distance driving
+
Most auto traffic is local
================
a net savings in fuel with no loss in safety

Can you see any Assumptions being made or can you come up with any Potential Objections?

There don’t seem to be many missing logical links. I know the lighter car is more fuel-efficient, so if people are driving the light car vs. the heavy one, then we are saving fuel. We must be assuming that people ARE driving the light car vs. the heavy one.

I know the lighter one is less safe at highway speeds, so we must be assuming that people are NOT driving the light car at highway speeds.

It looks like the author’s story makes sense as long as we assume that people are generally doing their local driving with the light car and their highway driving with the heavy car.

Wait a sec, couldn’t we object that people are only gonna have one car? Are you going to buy one car for your local driving and one car for your highway driving? Not unless you’re rich.

Maybe this author is failing to consider that people are forced to make a choice between the light one or the heavy one (because they can’t afford both) ... if they choose the heavy car for all their driving, then we’re not really saving any fuel. If they choose the light car for all their driving, then we ARE losing safety.

(Make sure when you do Strengthen questions that, after you find the argument core, you take a few moments to come up with Potential Objections. Many of the trickiest correct answers simply work by Ruling Out a Potential Objection)

(A) strengthens by providing the Assumption that people WOULD have more than one car. If this were NOT true, if most households that did long distance driving did NOT own at least 2 cars, then we would suddenly get the crushing objection that people are forced to choose EITHER the light one OR the heavy one. Your hesitation with (A) is that it doesn’t go far enough to PROVE the conclusion, but Strengthen answers never do that. They still leave the world in shades of grey. The important thing is that (A) provides a necessary assumption / rules out a potential objection. That makes an argument better.

(B) This doesn’t really have any effect, but the gist of it seems to cut against the idea that "most auto traffic is local" and seems to create the worry that we’re not really saving fuel (since the only hope of fuel savings w/o loss in safety was going to happen at medium speeds).

(C) This doesn’t address the 2-car solution that is championed in the conclusion. Instead it just suggests that the heavy cars of today might be less safe than the heavy cars of two decades ago. Since the heavy cars of today were meant to keep us equally safe, you might even say this answer weakens a bit.

(D) This argument was only about passenger vehicles, so bringing that distinction into the answer choice seems irrelevant.

(E) Who cares? This has no bearing on the conclusion or the argument.

Hope this helps.

[LeonC641]

Hi Manhattan,

I don't understand why the premise "most automobile traffic is local" can help the conclusion. Even if most car traffic is long-distance, the conclusion still stands because people have two types of car for their transportation.

Could you help explain, please? Thanks.
Leon