“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 discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The argument suggests that the government should launch a program to educate people about the factors to the accident rather than promoting the use of the helmets. However, I found the suggestion to be dubious. More specific evidence should be added to evaluate the argument properly. Each point of deficiency will be elaborated in the following paragraph.
The first fallacy lies on the reason of the increasing accidents caused by bicycling portrayed in the argument. The author claims that bicyclists take more risks due to the helmets which make them feel safety. However, the during the ten-year period, the condition of the cycling road may have been changed. What would happen if the roads are destructed and having more holes? Did the government take the responsibility to repair and maintain them? Accidents will be happened more frequently if the roads for cycling are in a bad condition.
Secondly, compared to ten years ago, the author claims that more than 45 percent of the bicyclists are wearing helmets today. Nevertheless, the author fails to provide the total number of the bicyclists. For example, if the total number of the bicyclists nowadays has a sharp decline, it is nonsense to claim that 80 percent of the bicyclists today represent a larger number of helmet-wearing bicyclists than before. To strengthen the argument, the author should provide the actual number of the bicyclists who wear helmets during cycling.
Lastly, the third fallacy lies on the assumption that bicyclists feel safer with helmets, therefore, they take more risks which cause more chances for the accidents. I found the presumption to be doubtful. The author fails to consider the quality of the helmets that the bicyclists are wearing. Some bicyclists have no enough money to purchase a costly helmet with high quality. The function of the cheap helmet is limited, the bicyclists therefore won’t feel safer to wear it. They wear the helmet just for appearance, or for the prevention from some small injuries.
In the view of above, it can be said that the conclusion presented in the argument is unconvincing unless more specific evidence are provided. In sum, the author needs to bolster the argument with information relevant to the quality of the helmets and the condition of the road nowadays. Moreover, the author needs to provide a statistic report with more precise information.
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Sentence: However, the during the ten-year period, the condition of the cycling road may have been changed.
Description: The token the is not usually followed by a preposition
Suggestion: Refer to the and during
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- better:
a ten-year nationwide study suggests that there is an increase of 45 percent of bicyclists who wear helmet while there is an increase of 200 percent of accidents related bicyclists. The author deems that there is a relation between those two increases. However, the author fails to consider the possibility that during ten years the population may have increased either. If true, the increase of accidents may be still limited in a normal level or even may decrease somewhat, because with the higher population, there are likely more bicyclists than before, so are cars and the roads will become more crowed. For that matter, accidents tend to happen more often but which may be not led by the increase of bicyclists who wear helmets.
argument 3 -- not OK. need to argue against the conclusion: '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.'
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: ? out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 391 350
No. of Characters: 1954 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.447 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.997 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.642 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 151 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.64 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.478 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.318 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.096 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5