The following appeared in a letter to the Director of the Department of Motor Vehicles:
“The use of cell phones while driving is a source of great concern to the community, particularly to parents with young children. Teenage drivers, who are the most likely to text or talk on the phone while driving, are among the most dangerous. In our county alone, there were about 75 fatalities from traffic collisions. If we raised the legal driving age from 16 to 20, the problem would largely be solved because the most dangerous drivers would no longer be on the road.”
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to address the reasonableness of both the prediction and the argument upon which it is based. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The Director of Department of Motor Vehicles claims that if we raise the legal driving age from 16 to 20, it would greatly decrease fatalities from traffic collisions as “the most dangerous drivers” would no longer be on the road. The director provides various reasons and statistics to support his conclusion. Unfortunately, his explanations and evidence do not logically support his claim and he makes a leap from various statements to unfounded conclusions. There are multiple questions and assumptions that need to be clarified in order to fully assess the validity of the director’s argument.
First and foremost, who is the most dangerous driver on the road? The Director of the Department of Motor Vehicles claims that this title goes to teenage drivers, as they are the most likely demographic to text or talk on the phone while driving. In order to support this statement, the director needs to provide more data on traffic collisions. For example, what percentage of total fatalities from traffic collisions can be attributed to teenagers? Additionally, what percentage of these fatalities were then attributable to texting while driving instead of other reasons? To provide a counter argument, drunk drivers could easily be the “most dangerous driver on the road.” Not only could the percentage of drunk drivers on the road be much higher than the percentage of texting-or-talking-while-driving teenage drivers, but drunk drivers’ reaction time in the face of emergencies is most likely slower due to intoxication than teenage drivers who are just temporarily distracted. Thus, if the director could provide more data and statistics on traffic collisions, we can then determine if teenage drivers are, in fact, the largest problem in terms of road safety, and thus justify the strategies suggested.
Another question that the director needs to answer is what cell phone usage looks like among other age groups. While texting or talking on the phone while driving is a serious problem concerning road safety, it is unlikely that teenagers are the only drivers doing it. As such, we need to know the percentage of teenagers who text or talk while driving, and compare it to other drivers of different age groups. It would probably not be surprising to find out that people who are in their 20s, 30s or 40s also have this risky habit while driving. With this information, we can then determine whether age is the main determinant of drivers who text or talk, or if this problem is persistent across all age groups. After finding out this answer, we can then accurately target the age groups that contribute most to the problem, or create programs that target drivers who text and talk in order to curb this behavior.
Last but not least, an important question that needs answering is whether raising the legal driving age could solve the problem? The director has already made multiple jumps in logic, and thus need to provide more evidence that such a policy would work. For example, if we raised the legal driving age from 16 to 20, would these problems not persist among young adults between the ages of 21 to 25? Young adults in that age range could be equally unresponsible due to their youthfulness. Additionally, since the legal drinking age is 21, would the ability to purchase alcohol (and thus get drunk) not compound the problem of inexperience and irresponsibility? If the director could provide evidence that such policies would improve safety on the road, such as if a town in America has already implemented this policy and has demonstrated successful results in reducing fatalities from traffic collisions, this would strengthen his argument and recommendation.
In conclusion, there are multiple flaws and assumptions that need to be addressed before we can evaluate the validity of the claim and policy suggestion made by the Director of the Department of Motor Vehicles. If the director can answer the questions presented above, we can then more accurately estimate how serious we should take the problem (instead of focusing on other demographics), as well as predict the impact of his policy change.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 679 350
No. of Characters: 3378 1500
No. of Different Words: 264 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.105 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.975 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.748 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 237 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 200 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 122 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 79 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.115 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.893 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.731 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.506 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.157 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, look, so, then, thus, well, while, for example, in conclusion, in fact, such as, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 26.0 12.9520958084 201% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 26.0 11.1786427146 233% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 89.0 55.5748502994 160% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3473.0 2260.96107784 154% => OK
No of words: 678.0 441.139720559 154% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.12241887906 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.10278680062 4.56307096286 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.97501107719 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 281.0 204.123752495 138% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.414454277286 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1066.5 705.55239521 151% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 74.3933975565 57.8364921388 129% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.92 119.503703932 116% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.12 23.324526521 116% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.52 5.70786347227 79% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.216943532232 0.218282227539 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0708064914106 0.0743258471296 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0644679526696 0.0701772020484 92% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.12223586429 0.128457276422 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0699220686059 0.0628817314937 111% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.2 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.24 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 140.0 98.500998004 142% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: 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.