Difficulty: Easy
Correct Answer: Both A and B
Explanation:
Introduction / Context:
Safe and efficient travel depends not only on driving skills but also on good planning before you start a trip. Many road safety courses and driving manuals highlight the importance of planning your route, checking traffic conditions, and estimating travel time. This question asks what careful trip planning can help reduce. It appears in general knowledge and driver education contexts to emphasise the benefits of preparation for both mental well being and practical efficiency on the road.
Given Data / Assumptions:
Concept / Approach:
Trip planning has two major benefits. First, it reduces stress because you know your route, expected traffic, and timing. Second, it can reduce driving distance by helping you choose the shortest or most efficient path to your destination. Insurance costs, however, are not directly reduced by individual trip planning in the short term, because they are usually determined by policies, claims history, and other factors. The correct approach is to evaluate each option logically and see which ones are directly influenced by planning your route and schedule.
Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Consider stress. If you plan your trip, you are less likely to feel rushed, lost, or surprised by delays, so stress naturally reduces.
Step 2: Consider driving distance. With maps and navigation tools, planning helps you avoid unnecessary detours and choose shorter or faster routes, reducing total distance.
Step 3: Examine insurance costs. These do not usually change just because of one well planned trip and are more related to long term driving record and insurance terms.
Step 4: Observe that planning clearly affects both stress and distance but not directly insurance costs.
Step 5: Notice that option C, Both A and B, combines stress and driving distance, the two factors that planning can reduce.
Step 6: Conclude that the best and most complete answer is option C, Both A and B.
Verification / Alternative check:
You can verify this by thinking of a trip where you did not plan versus one where you did. Without planning, you might get stuck in traffic, miss turns, or arrive late, all of which increase stress and may cause you to drive extra kilometres. With planning, you can check alternate routes, avoid peak congestion, and schedule rest breaks, which makes the journey smoother and often shorter. Insurance premiums will not fluctuate from one trip to another based on your planning, so they are not directly affected in the way the question describes.
Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Stress: While trip planning does reduce stress, choosing only this option ignores the second major benefit of reduced driving distance.
Driving distance: Planning can indeed cut distance, but this option alone ignores the clear mental benefit of lower stress that the question expects you to recognise.
Insurance costs: These are largely determined by policy terms, claim history, vehicle type, and long term driving behaviour, not by individual instances of route planning, so this option is not correct.
Common Pitfalls:
Some learners may select only one of the two benefits because they focus strictly on safety or strictly on time and distance. Others might be tempted by insurance costs, thinking that safer driving indirectly lowers costs, but this effect is very long term and is not directly tied to a single act of trip planning. To avoid such mistakes, pay attention to options that combine correct statements. When two separate options are clearly true and there is a combined option that includes both, that combined option is often the best answer.
Final Answer:
Careful trip planning helps reduce Both A and B, that is, stress and total driving distance.
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