Question 23 is based on the recording you have just heard.

Recording Three

听力原文

        According to official statistics, (22) [Thailand’s annual road death rate is almost double the global average.] Thai people know that their roads are dangerous, but they don’t know this could easily be changed.

       Globally, road accidents kill more people every year than any infectious disease. Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in America put the death toll in 2017 at 1.24 million. According to the institute, (23) [the overall number of deaths has been more or less static since the turn of the century, but that disguises a lot of changes in individual countries. ]

        In many poor countries, road accidents are killing more people than ever before. Those countries have swelling young populations, a fast-growing fleet of cars and motorbikes and a limited supply of surgeons. It is impossible to know for sure, because official statistics are so inadequate. But deaths are thought to have risen by 40% since 1990 in many low income countries.In many rich countries, by contrast, roads are becoming even safer. In Estonia and Ireland, for example, the number of deaths has fallen by about two thirds since the late 1990s.

        (24) [But the most important and intriguing changes are taking place in middle-income countries, which contain most of the world’s people, and have some of the most dangerous roads. According to researchers, in China and South Africa traffic deaths have been falling since 2000, and in India since 2012, and the Philippines reached its peak four years ago.] The question is whether Thailand can soon follow suit.

        Rob McInerney, head of the International Road Assessment Program, says that all countries tend to go through three phases. They begin with poor, slow roads. In the second phase, as they grow wealthier, they pave the roads, allowing traffic to move faster and pushing up the death rate. Lastly, in the third phase, countries act to make their roads safer. The trick, then, is to reach the third stage sooner by focusing earlier and more closely on fatal accidents.

        How to do that? (25) [The solution lies not just in better infrastructure, but in better social incentives. Safe driving habits are practices which people know they should follow but often don’t.] Dangerous driving is not a fixed cultural trait, as some imagine. People respond to incentives such as traffic laws that are actually enforced.

23. What do we learn from an American institute’s statistics regarding road deaths?（从一家美国研究机构关于交通事故死亡的统计数据中，我们可以知道什么？）

解析：B。录音中提到，一家美国研究机构称，自世纪之交以来，死亡总人数基本稳定，但这掩盖了个别国家的许多变化。B项的don’t reflect对应录音中的disguises, changes in individual countries为原词复现，因此选B。

错项排除：录音中提到了富裕国家和贫穷国家的道路情况，但这不是该研究机构提供的全球死亡总人数所反映出来的，故排除A项。C项中的rise and fall与录音中的more or less static相悖，故排除。录音中只是说官方统计数据不充分，无法得知确切数字，并没有说它的统计数据不可靠，故D项排除。