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.
The argument that Prunty County should adopt the safety measures used by Butler County as it helped the latter decrease the accident rate by 25 percent, is not entirely sound. The author ignores certain crucial assumptions.
Firstly, the argument states that the accident rate in Prunty County did not decrease after changing the speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour. The conclusion is based solely on the premise that the speed limit was the only reason for accidents in the county. There could be other factors that contributed to the accidents in the county like potholes on the road, or environmental factors like fog or mist, heavy rainfall, etc., absence of road signs at crucial intersections or turnings, etc.
Secondly, the argument states that Butler County has experienced a 25 percent decrease in accidents after undertaking road improvement projects. In the absence of absolute figures, the argument present could be misleading. The author does not give any information about the original accident rate for us to comprehend what the 25 percent decrease in accident rate signifies. Let us consider the following example, Butler County's original accident rate is 100 per month, after implementing the changes, it becomes 75 per month, whereas say Prunty County's original accident rate is 1000 per month and after implementation would be 750 per month which is not a significant decrease. Additionally, Butler County could have done some other changes apart from the ones listed in the argument which contributed to a decrease accident rate which is more than 25 percent. for instance, maybe filling potholes on the highway resulted in decreasing the accidents by 30 percent which is more than 25 percent decrease stated in the argument. The data is unconvincing and is flawed on several accounts as the author has overlooked certain salient points which are vital for a strong assertive argument.
Moreover, the conclusion that Prunty County should undertake the same measures as Butler County to improve its road conditions is based singularly on the fact that both counties have the same speed limit of 55 miles per hour. The argument attempts to make a weak analogy between the two counties. Just because both counties have the same speed limit does not necessarily mean that they are similar in all respects.
Thus, the argument is not completely sound. The evidence is support of this is fallacious as it based on unproved suppositions posited as facts. Ultimately, the argument would have been strengthened if it were to answer some important questions like what the original accident rate of Butler County is or, what other factors are the reasons for accidents in Prunty County, or stating whether both counties are similar in all respects. Thus, because of these 3 flaws, the argument is weak.
Comments
argument 1 -- OK. a better
argument 1 -- OK. a better argument: The argument assumes that all other factors affecting highway accident rates have remained unchanged since the county lowered its speed limit.
argument 2 -- not OK. Anyway it has decreased. better way: it didn't tell us how is the accidents rate 5 years ago, maybe it is very high, even if the rate is decreased 25%, the accidents rate may be still higher than that in Prunty County.
argument 3 -- OK but be more specific. better: highways of Prunty Country might have already been in perfect condition. Hence, improvements in structure would not show the same benefits as it did in Butler Country. Moreover, there might be other issues that cause the accidents in Prunty Country. For example, drivers in that area are less likely to follow the traffic regulations. Thus, increasing punishments or trying to increase the attention of drivers to traffic rules might be more effective than improvement is highways.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 461 350
No. of Characters: 2314 1500
No. of Different Words: 199 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.634 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.02 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.618 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 177 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 137 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.611 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.568 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.444 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.562 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
please review my essay :) thank you