Premiums for automobile accident insurance are often higher for red cars than for cars of other colors. To justify th...

Morad on September 23, 2020

Also curious what is wrong with E?

Morad on October 7, 2021

A year later, I took a quick look and quickly found why the right answer was C). Better late than never!

The question stem states:
"Premiums for automobile accident insurance are often higher for red cars than for cars of other colors. To justify these higher charges, insurance companies claim that, overall, a greater percentage of red cars are involved in accidents than are cars of any other color. If this claim is true, then lives could undoubtedly be saved by banning red cars from the roads altogether."

The last two sentences are the only relevant ones which state that banning red cars would save lives because red cars have the greatest percentage of accidents compared to any other car.

This is an "Error in Reasoning" question asking us to find the flaw that the argument made. So let's think through some possible flaws that stand out.

3 flaws jump to mind immediately:
1) It could be that all the red car accidents are just harmless rear-ends that don't result in any lives lost. The risk of fatality as a result of the accident is not discussed, and so there's a hole here where the argument assumes that "At least some accidents involving red cars lead to lives lost." Anything calling out this assumption would be an attractive option.

2) The argument also assumes that red cars are the reasons we're seeing that greater percentage of accidents. It completely overlooks the obvious that the drivers of red cars are particularly horrible. Anything saying it's the drivers' fault and not the red cars' fault would also be attractive.

Answer Choice C) says: "ignores the possibility that drivers who drive recklessly have a preference for red cars".
This clearly lines up with our second anticipation. If it's the driver's fault for the accidents, it doesn't matter if you put them in a red or blue car, they'll create the accidents regardless. This is the correct answer.

Answer choice E) says: "makes an unsupported assumption that every automobile accident results in some loss of life".
This is bait. While it does slightly resemble our first assumption, this answer choice is way to strong. The speaker is not making the assumption that "every automobile accident" results in lives lost - the speaker is only saying that at least some red car accidents do.

Hope this helps whoever has issues with this question!

Morad on October 7, 2021

I said I saw 3 flaws - this is a typo. That should be 2! Sorry for the confusion.