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 patro

Proponents of the claim that Prunty County should follow Butler County in regard to their Highway system has reasoned that Bulter county has had reduced accidents by 25%, that the recent lowering of Butler’s speed limit has no effect on accident rates, and that highway patrol anecdotally describes that drivers exceed Butler’s 55 miles per hour speed limit. While all reasons may seem valid on their own, each are accompanied with hidden assumptions. Thus, while it may be true that Pruty County could benefit from an improved highway system, the evidence provided has too many holes to agree with the author’s conclusion that Pruty County must follow Butler’s transportation strategy.

First, the information provided states that after dropping Prunty County’s speed limit from 55 miles per hour to 45 miles per hour had no effect on decreasing the number of accidents. At first glance, this peice of information may actually be true, what it missing is a report on the types of accidents. If the entire goal of improving Prunty County is to to enhance saftey, then it would be prudent to know if fatalities were decresed from lowering the speed limit. Otherwise, by only knowing the amount of accidents, one cannot differentiate between five people dying in a car crash to a minor accident involving only minor damage to one car. Knowing the death rate, or any health statistic would prove quite helpful.

Second, it was reported that after Bulter County overhauled their highway system, there were 25 percent few accidents in the last year than there were five years ago. Again, what may seem like a straighfoward truth, in actuality, it is not. This statistical statement is useless unless Butler’s last year accident report was compared to all of the other previous years. In doing so, it would remove the potential that last year and five years ago was not just an abberation, and would increase the value of this statistic.

Third, the anectdotal evidence that highway patrol observed that drivers still exceeded the speed limit is weak on its own. What is needed to strengthen this argument is how the data was collected. Was this collected from one officer in a quick converstion, or was this information gathered with strict statistical protocols? The method on how this information was gathered would prove quite valuable to what the police observed.

In a final analysis, for the reasons that Prunty should define saftey with clear measurments like deaths opposed to plain accidents, statistical data of Butler county accident rates should compare multiple years to increase accuracy of claim, and anectdotal evidence without transparent knowledge of how the information was gathered is useless, the rationalization to copy Bulter County’s highway system is based on scant evidence. Although upgrading Prunty County's highway could increase the saftey of drivers, the justifications given by the author are misplaced and cannot be given credence.