The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of accidents caused by bicycling has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets, and they take more risks as a result. Thus, there is clearly a call for the government to strive to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents by launching an education program that concentrates on the factors other than helmet use that are necessary for bicycle safety."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In this argument, the author suggests that the government pay more attention to educations about bicycle safety than encouraging bicyclists to wear helmets. This claim is based on statistics reflecting an increase of helmets wearing and bicycle-caused accidents, an assertion that wearing helmets causes more risks, and the conclusion that education program will be more effective than using helmets. Nonetheless, the argument contains several assumptions that seriously undermine the cogency of its conclusion.
As the author mentions, a increasing number of accidents caused by bicycling implies that bicycles tend to cause more accidents today than ten years ago. It is apparently premised that the quantity of bicycles is stable. Yet no one can deny the probability that the number of bicycles experienced a more distinct increase during the last decade. For instance, there are four times bicycles as much as it was ten years ago, in which case the proportion of bicycle-caused accidents decreases instead of increases. Therefore more statistics about the total number of bicycles is needed to illustrate the inference.
Even though the percentage of accidents caused by bicycling distinctly rises, the author can hardly conduct that the rise is definitely led by helmets. He obviously assumes that people involved in accidents all wear helmets and there is no other possible causes. Nonetheless, he fails to preclude the possibility that most of the victims disregard the importance of wearing helmets and cycle without any protection, which consequently causes severe injuries. Thus lacking more detailed circumstances of these accidents, the assertion that wearing helmets causes more risks seems unwarranted.
Even if the use of helmets truly leads to more accidents, the author should not rush to the conclusion that education program is a better solution to the safety problem. He clearly approves the assumption that education on safety issues will contribute to the enhancement of security awareness and thereby reduce the occurrence of accidents. The truth might be, however, bicyclists have been too tired of taking lessons to concentrate on this program any more, which could seriously impair its effectiveness. Accordingly, the author should present more evidence about the reliability of education program so as to demonstrate its superiority to other solutions.
Conclusively, the author proposes that government attach importance to educations other than helmets use. While some unfounded assumptions contained impair the validity of his argument and requires more convincing demonstration.
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK. need to argue here:
Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of accidents caused by bicycling has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets, and they take more risks as a result.
Suggested:
Though the bicyclists might have felt safer because of helmets, there would have been other reasons for accidents like: problem with the vehicle, drinking and driving etc... Therefore, the author needs to provide more information regarding the authenticity and validity of the second survey and carefully discount other factors that might have lead to accidents.
argument 3 -- OK
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 393 350
No. of Characters: 2179 1500
No. of Different Words: 202 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.452 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.545 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.939 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 178 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 143 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 109 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 80 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.833 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.353 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.341 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.579 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5