单选题 A recent study, published in last week"s Journal of the American Medical Association, offers a picture of how risky it is to get a lift from a teenage driver. Indeed, a 16-year-old driver with three or more passengers is three times as likely to have a fatal accident as a teenager driving alone. By contrast, the risk of death for drivers between 30 and 59 decreases with each additional passenger.The authors also found that the death rates for teenage drivers increased dramatically after 10 p.m., and especially after midnight, with passengers in the car, the driver was even more likely to die in a late-night accident Robert Foss, a scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, says the higher death rates for teenage drivers have less to do with "really stupid behavior" than with just a lack of driving experience. "The basic issue," He says, "is that adults who are responsible for issuing licenses fail to recognize how complex and skilled a task driving is. " Both he and the author of the study believe that the way to mitigate (使......缓解) the problem is to have states institute so-called graduated licensing systems, in which getting a license is a multistage process. A graduated license requires that a teenager first prove himself capable of driving in the presence of an adult, followed by a period of driving with night of passenger restrictions, before graduating to full driving privileges. Graduated licensing systems have reduced teenage driver crashes, according to recent studies. About half of the states now have some sort of graduated licensing system in place, but only 10 of those states have restrictions on passengers. California is the strictest, with a novice (新手) driver prohibited from carrying any passenger under 20 (with-out the presence of an adult over 25) for the first six months. (311 words)

单选题 Which of the following situations is most dangerous according to the passage?

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】解析：本题属于推断题。关于驾车危险性问题，在文章开头举的几个例子中有充分的说明。第一个例子说一个16岁的司机搭载3、4名乘客时，其发生致命事故的可能性是他单独驾车时的3倍，第二个例子说青少年在晚上10点以后驾车的死亡率大幅上升；车内同时又有乘客的话，则发生致死事故的可能性会更高。把这道题的几个选项和上面的例子进行对比就可以找到正确答案。本文谈论的是未成年驾车者的问题，因此A和C被否定，从第一段和第二段内容综合来看，其事故原因有二：一是驾车时有搭载乘客，二是午夜后容易出事故，因此B为最佳选项。

单选题 According to Robert Foss, the high death rate of teenage drivers is mainly due to

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】解析：本题属于细节理解题。文章提到Robert Foss是在第三段，“Robert Foss，a scientist at the University”，那么答案也只能在第三段寻找。正确理解这句话的意思：“the higher death rates for teenage drivers have less to do with ‘really stupid behavior’ than with just a lack of driving experience”(高死亡率与缺少驾驶经验缺失的关系比“做傻事”更大)。由此可见C“缺少驾驶经验”是正确的。

单选题 According to Paragraph 3, which of the following statements is TRUE?

单选题 A suggested measure to be taken to reduce teenagers" driving accidents is that

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】解析：本题属于事实细节题。从第四段可知，研究者设立了一种新的具有约束性的执照发放体系，即经过重重考验之后，未成年人才可获得驾车的所有权利。对应选项应为D。对于A、B、C所说的几条建议，在最后两段介绍的建议中都只字未提，所以不应选择。

单选题 The present situation in about half of the states is that the graduated licensing system______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】解析：本题属于细节理解题。第五段第一句“Graduated licensing systems have reduced teenage driver crashes”的意思很明了，分步发放系统已经减少青少年驾车事故，这说明这一系统已经起到了效果，与C的说法一致。后面的一句话是个长句，大体意思是说一半的州虽然实施了分步发放系统，但在乘客限制上不是很严格，只有加利福尼亚较为严格。这说明这一系统还需要进行完善，D就不对了。文章没有提到这一系统是否正处在讨论中，从已经实施这一情况来看，应该是讨论过并得到确立了。这样A和B的说法就都是错误的。