In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County last year lowered its speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour on all county highways. But this effort has failed: the number of accidents has not decreased, and, based on reports by the highway patro

Essay topics:

In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County last year lowered its speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour on all county highways. But this effort has failed: the number of accidents has not decreased, and, based on reports by the highway patrol, many drivers are exceeding the speed limit. Prunty County should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths, resurfacing rough highways, and improving visibility at dangerous intersections. Today, major Butler County roads still have a 55 mph speed limit, yet there were 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler County this past year than there were five years ago.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

In the argument, the author comments to undertake the road improvement project implemented in Butler County (BC) is to be done in the Prunty County (PC). He gives the reasons of decreasing the number of accidents by the same. At first this seems like a good argument, but the reasons provided in the argument are vague and do not have the evidence for support it. Hence the validity of the argument is in question under the following reasons.

The author assumes that the road improvement project in BC to be undertaken in PC would reduce the accident percentage. This does not hold true for many reasons. His assumption of BC and PC to have all equal entities in road safety is not evidenced. BC might be a bigger county with less drivers whereas PC, a busier county and more drivers. The BC roads were small width roads and less visibility lanes and an improvement there improved the deficiencies. PC might already have wide and more visibililty lanes. The issue must be the drivers in PC. Since we do not know the differences, it might be difficult to say the same road improvement would be helpful in PC.

In the argument, the author indicates that it was only due to the improvements that were made in the roads in BC that the accidents decreased. He fails to mention and look for other reasons. For example, The drivers in BC might have to undergo safety driving class, or they are more responsible, or there might more highay patrols in BC to check for reckless driving. Not looking into other factors that might help in contributing to the road improvement makes the argument less plausible.

Lastly, the author mentions, after the project being implemented, there was a reduction of 25% of accidents in the last year than in the past five years. When this data looks legitimate at first, he fails to give further supporting evidence to that. There is no mention of the accident data for the previous consecutive years or no data to show how the accident rates are calculated in BC. It could be possible there was an increase or the accident percentage was same for the years after the project. The drivers might not have got used to the new changes and was careless. Maybe in PC, even a scratch between cars might be counted as accidents, whereas in BC they go unreported. Without all the facts, the argument seems illogical.

Eventhough the author, has the best interest at heart and wants to ensure safety of PC, the reasons he gave in this argument for the implementation of the road improvement project seems not valid. Hence before the PC council takes major decisions on the project, I urge them to reconsider the actual reasons for the BC accident improvement percentage.

Votes
Average: 7 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 361, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...o not have the evidence for support it. Hence the validity of the argument is in ques...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 284, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun drivers is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...enced. BC might be a bigger county with less drivers whereas PC, a busier county and...
^^^^
Line 5, column 269, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...have to undergo safety driving class, or they are more responsible, or there migh...
^^
Line 9, column 198, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...ad improvement project seems not valid. Hence before the PC council takes major decis...
^^^^^

Discourse Markers used:
['but', 'first', 'hence', 'if', 'lastly', 'look', 'may', 'so', 'whereas', 'for example']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.267961165049 0.25644967241 104% => OK
Verbs: 0.15145631068 0.15541462614 97% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0854368932039 0.0836205057962 102% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0291262135922 0.0520304965353 56% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0271844660194 0.0272364105082 100% => OK
Prepositions: 0.118446601942 0.125424944231 94% => OK
Participles: 0.0330097087379 0.0416121511921 79% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.65446109292 2.79052419416 95% => OK
Infinitives: 0.031067961165 0.026700313972 116% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.132038834951 0.113004496875 117% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0233009708738 0.0255425247493 91% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00776699029126 0.0127820249294 61% => OK

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2694.0 2731.13054187 99% => OK
No of words: 471.0 446.07635468 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.71974522293 6.12365571057 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65859790218 4.57801047555 102% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.299363057325 0.378187486979 79% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.242038216561 0.287650121315 84% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.169851380042 0.208842608468 81% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.104033970276 0.135150697306 77% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65446109292 2.79052419416 95% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 207.018472906 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.456475583864 0.469332199767 97% => OK
Word variations: 51.3216056497 52.1807786196 98% => OK
How many sentences: 25.0 20.039408867 125% => OK
Sentence length: 18.84 23.2022227129 81% => OK
Sentence length SD: 42.7595322706 57.7814097925 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.76 141.986410481 76% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.84 23.2022227129 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.4 0.724660767414 55% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 3.58251231527 112% => OK
Readability: 43.0438216561 51.9672348444 83% => OK
Elegance: 2.01869158879 1.8405768891 110% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.311858957486 0.441005458295 71% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.120784080002 0.135418324435 89% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0795920789521 0.0829849096947 96% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.544898415801 0.58762219726 93% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.194403060118 0.147661913831 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.131788982328 0.193483328276 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0566909442665 0.0970749176394 58% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.541615776416 0.42659136922 127% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0245591465287 0.0774707102158 32% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.23342101614 0.312017818177 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0279130776695 0.0698173142475 40% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.33743842365 108% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.87684729064 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.82512315271 62% => OK
Positive topic words: 8.0 6.46551724138 124% => OK
Negative topic words: 11.0 5.36822660099 205% => OK
Neutral topic words: 2.0 2.82389162562 71% => OK
Total topic words: 21.0 14.657635468 143% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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Rates: 70.83 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.25 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. The e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.