Logical reasoning PrepTest 130 · Section 3 · Question 22

Incorrect. The only group that might be biased here is the insurance company. However, there's no indication if these insurance companies are insuring the drivers or the pedestrians, so we don't know who they'd prefer to blame. They could be car insurance companies insuring the drivers and thus want to blame the pedestrians; or medical insurance companies insuring the pedestrians and thus want to blame the drivers. Since the company's data might speak against its interests, we can't say for sure that they're biased.

Incorrect. The conclusion here isn't causal, so this answer is incorrect.

Incorrect. Another causal answer that can be ruled out since the conclusion isn't causal.

Incorrect. If the conclusion were about crossing against the lights anywhere, then this answer would be correct. However, the premises are about North American cities, and the conclusion is about North American cities, so there's no shift in the environment discussed.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Errors in Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
More people are killed in cities while crossing with the light than against it, so crossing with the light in a city is more dangerous than crossing against it.

Answer Anticipation:
This answer has a "tell" early on that suggests a specific flaw, though it does a great job of hiding the second half of it. That "tell" is that it talks about the number of pedestrians killed every year in one situation compared to another ("more pedestrians"). When a premise talks about the number of a certain occurrence, it will frequently draw a conclusion about percentages, thus committing a Percent vs. Amount flaw.

And while it doesn't mention percentages specifically, it does bring up a concept inherently tied to percentages—danger. Saying one thing is less dangerous than another means that one thing has a lower percentage of resulting in bad things than another. For example, there are significantly more people who die in car accidents each year than die by drinking poison, but driving in a car is less dangerous than drinking poison because you're more likely to die if you do the latter than the former.

Since this argument commits a Percent vs. Amount flaw, we should look for an answer that either directly describes that flaw, or it talks about the relative rate that the two observed phenomena occur at. What we mean by that is that such an argument is flawed because it ignores the possibility that the thing that happened more times also happened a lot more, leaving open the possibility that the number is higher but the percentage lower. If 100 people cross with the light for every 1 person that crosses against it, of course there are more fatalities in the former group, even if only 1/1000 of them are hit by a car whereas 1/20 of the latter are.

Answer Explanation:
This answer speaks to the Percent vs. Amount flaw. If crossing with the light is significantly more common than crossing against it, then the number of people killed while doing so might be higher while the percentage of people who die while doing it is lower than the alternative.

Key Takeaway:
First, note whenever an argument discusses the number of something. That's half of a Percent vs. Amount flaw! Second, note that percentages can be hidden in other language. Here, we saw how danger made it harder to spot that the conclusion was about the percentage of people engaged in an action who suffer negative consequences from it.