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 numbe

Focusing on educating people about bicycle safety could be a good solution. But the author makes a number of unsubstantiated assumptions about the use of helmets by bicyclists. Based on these assumptions, the author makes his/her bold proposal of changing the focus of the government of requiring bicyclists to wear helmets for educating people about bicycle safety. Though this solution was thought to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents, this may fail in reaching this and could even increase the bicycle-related accidents.

The author's first mistake is to assume that because of the increment of bicycle-related accidents, bicyclists tend to feel safer by wearing helmets and take risks. The author points out that the number of accidents has increased 200 percent during ten-year period. The author provides no reason, however, to assume that bicyclits take risks because of the confidence of wearing helmets. Perhaps, all the bicyclists who had accidents during the ten-year-period were not wearing a helmet. The argument would have been stronger if it had provided some information which shows how many bicyclists had accidents were wearing a helmet and how many were not.

Besides, the argument also leaves some questions unanswered. Even if we suppose that many bicyclists were wearing helmets while they had an accident, it does not prove that both studies be connected. The author does not mention that the survey which shows an increment in the bicycle-related accidents belongs to the same country where the use of helmets increased. If the author had presented a complete survey which demonstrates that information corresponds to the same nation, his/her argument would be more persuasive.

Finally, the argument claims without warrant that there was an increment in the quantity of persons who wear helmets. The argument just presents percentages of people who wear helmets in a country ten years and at present. It does not necessarily implies that number of bicyclists wearing helmet increased. Maybe the number of bicyclists wearing helmets maintained the same; many people could have evenly left that country during the ten years.

Because the argument provides unwarranted assumptions, it fails to make a convincing case that by wearing helmets, bicyclists become reckless and tend to take more risks.