PrepTest 118, Section 1, Question 15
At the request of Grove Park residents, speed(54 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the argument(10 more words not shown)
- Aignores the possibility(15 more words not shown)
- Bneglects the possibility(10 more words not shown)
- Cprovides no evidence(12 more words not shown)
- Dcontains the tacit(15 more words not shown)
- Epresumes, without providing(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A speed bump isn't a gate. Drivers can still use the street; they may just have to slow down. The author calls the bumps unfair because everyone has a right to use these publicly funded roads. Let's grant that right. How do the bumps violate it? Having access to a road doesn't mean getting to drive along it at any speed we like.
What we’re looking for
Imagine commuters cutting through a residential neighborhood at fifty miles an hour. Residents could have a reason to slow them down without trying to keep them out. That's a possible justification, not an established fact about Grove Park. More fundamentally, the argument hasn't shown that the bumps prevent access at all. For the flaw question, that's the jump I'd target: treating a restriction on how people drive as a denial of their ability to use the road.
Working the answers
- A
If the bumps don't reduce speed, that could undermine a reason for installing them. But our author opposes the bumps. Their possible ineffectiveness isn't the missing connection between installing them and violating drivers' access rights. It doesn't identify the problem with the author's objection.
- B
High speeds could give the residents a reason to want speed bumps. We considered that possibility while reading. But the central problem is more direct: the author uses the right to access a road to object to a measure that hasn't been shown to deny access. Even if nobody had been speeding, that inference would still be unsupported.
- C
Drivers don't have to complain for a policy to be unfair, and complaints wouldn't establish unfairness by themselves. The author relies on the public nature of the roads and drivers' rights, not on the number of objections received. C doesn't address that reasoning.
- D
This goes against the author's position. The author objects that the residents' preferred measure unfairly interferes with other drivers' rights. The argument doesn't assume that residents have a right to impose that interference. It treats the public's access as a reason to reject the bumps.
- ECorrect
The author's appeal to access rights depends on treating the speed bumps as something that prevents drivers from using the roads. But drivers could still enter the neighborhood and travel through it at a slower speed. Without a reason to equate the bumps with denied access, the claimed unfairness doesn't follow from the right the author cites.
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