To find out how many miles a person who drives for 48 minutes should expect to travel, we can plug \( x = 48 \) into the regression equation \( y = 1.04x - 7.15 \).
Calculating this:
\[ y = 1.04(48) - 7.15 \]
\[ y = 49.92 - 7.15 \]
\[ y = 42.77 \]
Rounding this to the nearest whole number, we get approximately 43 miles.
Since the options provided are:
- 32 miles
- 42 miles
- 48 miles
- 54 miles
The closest expected value based on the regression equation would be 42 miles.