Final answer:
Police checkpoints where vehicles are inspected to infer the safety of all vehicles on the road use inferential statistics. This allows predictions about the larger population based on a smaller sample.
Step-by-step explanation:
The scenario where police set up a vehicle checkpoint and drivers are stopped at random for inspections involves using inferential statistics. In this case, the checkpoint serves as a sample from the larger population of all drivers and vehicles on the road. The observations and issues found during the inspections can help estimate the safety of all vehicles, not just those inspected. Inferential statistics are used because they allow us to make predictions or inferences about a population based on a sample.