"On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during the summer months. To reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island should limit the

The argument that the number of moped rentals should be reduced in order to achieve the reduction in the number of accidents achieved by a neighbouring island is flawed as it fails to take into consider a few critical questions on which the soundness of the argument depends.

In the following essay, I shall proceed to expose these questions and in light of them, evaluate the quality of the argument.

A first question that would need to be answered is what exactly is the number of moped related accidents on Balmer accident, if any? The argument makes the recommendation of reducing the nr of rentals based on the assumption that by doing so, Balmer Island will achieve the same reduction in the nr of accidents that the people on Seaville island achieved on the previous year by imposing similar limits. However, one must first know if the conditions on the two islands are the same. That is, are the number of accidents on Balmer Island the same as on Seaville? Was the enforced limitation on moped rentals the only reason for the decrease in the number of accidents? Is it turns aut that there were other reasons at work, like perhaps the fact that people, either moped drivers or pedestrians were more careful, or perhaps mopeds stopped being a popular form of entertainment or transportation, then the whole argument falls apart.

Furthermore, one would need to know what the population of Seaville was in comparison with Balmer Island. If the population of the former was less, then it is logical that the number of accidents registered was also smaller. In such a case, imposing a limit on rentals similar to the one on Seaville, will not guarantee that balmer island attains the expected 50 percent annual reduction that was achieved on Seaville simply because the populations of the two are different in numbers.

Also, what is number of mopeds in Seaville compared to Balmer? If on Seavile there were less mopeds to begin with, say for example, 50 mopeds compared with 100 on the neighbouring island, then limiting the number of rentals from 50 to 25% per day, would mean that there are less mopeds available on Seaville than on Balmer.

All in all, without provinding some answers to the aforementioned questions the argument falls short of being convincing that the the decision to reduce the number of moped rentals on balmer island from 50 to 25 percent will have exactly the same result as it did on the neighbouring island.