Q1 - A company produced a small car

[smiller]

Question Type:
Explain a Result

Stimulus Breakdown:
The car described in the stimulus is much less safe than any other car. We would expect people who own the car to be less safe, but the stimulus tells us that they are safer.

Answer Anticipation:
A correct answer will help explain how both of these facts can be true at the same time: if the car is less safe, how did the owners still increase their safety? The correct answer is likely to involve something other than the car itself, some factor that could increase safety such as the way the car is driven. Maybe people who own this car drive more carefully because they know the car is less safe.

Correct answer:
(E)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) If anything, this answer would support the expected result that owners would be less safe. It doesn't explain why owners are safer.

(B) This seems good at first glance. If this is true, it means that the car could be safer that expected even though it costs less. But the stimulus doesn't state that the car is expected to be less safe or likely to be less safe. The stimulus explicitly states that the car is much less safe.

(C) Being unaware that the car is less safe doesn't clearly explain why the owners end up increasing their safety. If anything, this is the opposite of what we anticipated.

(D) It's not clear how owning more than one car could help increase safety unless we make a lot of additional assumptions. Maybe this means there would be fewer people in each car, and thus fewer potential injuries if an accident occurs? But it could also mean more people are using these cars at any given time, which would seem to increase risks. It's too easy for this answer to go either way, increasing or decreasing safety depending on how you look at it.

(E) This gives us a clear reason to believe that people increase their safety by buying the car. It's not exactly what we anticipated, but it's similar. The stimulus compared the safety of the car to other cars, but the safety of the owners has increased compared to their previous modes of transportation.

Takeaway/Pattern:
The correct answer to an Explain a Result question is likely to bring in some new piece of information—new, but relevant—that was not included in the stimulus. Watch out for answers like (B) that seem appealing but are already accounted for by the stimulus, and watch out for answers like (D) that require too many additional assumptions.

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