Task 1The decline in the auto motive industry began with the oil crisis of 1973—1994, when gasoline prices rose over 300 percent. Almost immediately, consumers began switching to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, which were the strengths of the major auto importers. This shift in demand from large to smaller cars did not reverse itself later in the 1970s, and the foreign importers continued to gain market share. Detroit’s efforts to produce competitive small cars were limited by its continuing expectation that large-car demand would soon resume. So only slowly did the domestic industry put its resources into small-car production, resulting in inadequate supply as well as inadequate concern for quality and performance. During this period, consumers discovered that similarly priced imports generally offered better performance and fewer problems than US-produced cars.According to a recently-made study named Some Estimates for Major Automotive Producers, even GM, the most cost-efficient US producer averages close to $900 more per car than the least cost-efficient Japanese producer, Toyota.Notice the single most important factor in Japanese competitiveness is not government subsidies (津贴) or a policy of "dumping" cars in the US market. Rather, it is labor cost. This difference of almost $2,000 per car favors the Japanese producers so strongly that all other comparisons virtually can be ignored. Which one is the decisive factor in Japanese competitiveness()
A. Government policy.
B. Labor cost.
C. Market demand.
Dumping policy.
Task 2Accidents are caused; they don’t just happen. The reason may be easy to sec: an overloaded tray, a shell’ out of reach, a patch of ice on the road. But more often than that there is a chain of events leading up to the misfortune—frustration, tiredness or just bad temper—that show what the accident really is, a sort of attack on oneself.Road accidents, for example, happen frequently after a family quarrel and we all know people who are accident-prone, so often at odds with themselves and the world that they seem to cause accidents for themselves and others.By definition, an accident is something you cannot predict or avoid, and the idea which used to be current, that the majority of road accidents are caused by a minority of criminally careless drivers, is not supported by insurance statistics. These show that most accidents involve ordinary motorists in a moment of carelessness or thoughtlessness.It is not always clear, either, what sort of conditions make people more likely to have an accident. For instance, the law requires all factories to take safety precautions and most companies have safety committees to make sure the regulations are observed, but still, every day in Britain, some fifty thousand men and women are absent from work due to an accident. These accidents are largely the result of human error or misjudgment—noise and fatigue, boredom or worry are possible factors which contribute to this. Doctors who work in factories have found that those who drink too much, usually people who have a high anxiety level, run three times the normal risk of accidents at work. The passage suggests that()
A. accidents mostly result from slippery roads
B. accidents are usually caused by psychological factors
C. doctors run three times the normal risk of accidents in factories
D. about 50,000 people lose their lives at work in Britain every day