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 patrol, many drivers are exceeding the speed limit. Prunty County should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths, resurfacing rough highways, and improving visibility at dangerous intersections. Today, major Butler County roads still have a 55 mph speed limit, yet there were 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler County this past year than there were five years ago.
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 claims that to decrease the number of accidents, Prunty Country was adopted a new legistation that lowers the speed limit on all court highways from 55 miles to 45 per hour. However, no improvement in the safety of roads is observed. Hence, the city council decided to apply the strategy that was successful in Butler Country. Stated in this way, the argument suffers from leap of faith and poor reasoning. The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.
First, the argument readily assumes that the legislatation is not effective. This is stretched and unsupported. The decrease in speed policy has been in use for only one year and deciding its effectiveness in such a short period is not logical. Moreover, in the argument it is stated that many drivers do not obey the limitations. Since the legislation did not reached the desired adoptance levels, determining its impact is difficult. In order to decide whether its effective, city council and police officers should ensure these limitations are obeyed by majority of drivers. There is a possibility that drivers pass the speed limit due to their unawareness about the new law. Hence, increasing the awareness might be useful for increasing the number of drivers who obey this new rule. If the many drivers had obeyed the new legislation, then it is effectiveness could be evaluated more reliably.
Second, the argument assumes that the measures that were taken in Butler Country five years ago would be effective also in Prunty Country. This is again very weak and undeveloped claim as the argument does not demonstrate any clear correlation between Prunty Country and Butler Country. To illustrate, improvements in physical conditions of Butler Country might be effective because the accidents in that area mostly caused by poor infrastructure. However, highways of Prunty Country might have already been in perfect condition. Hence, improvements in structure would not show the same benefits as it did in Butler Country. Moreover, there might be other issues that cause the accidents in Prunty Country. For example, drivers in that area are less likely to follow the traffic regulations. Thus, increasing punishments or trying to increase the attention of drivers to traffic rules might be more effective than improvement is highways. Consequently, the argument would be much clearer if it explicitly presented the information about conditions of highways in Prunty Country is the reason of the accidents or not and it explained the connection between Prunty Country and Butler Country.
Finally, even though Prunty Country and Butler Country are essentially similar; there might be other factors rather than improvements in highways that decrease the number of accidents in that area. The decrease might be the result of promoting public transportation in Butler Country. Moreover,due to economical crisis in the last five years people might not prefer to own a car.There is a possibility that increase in gasoline prices or awareness about the environmental impact of carbon emission leads people to decrease their car usage. Without considering other factors that might cause the decrease in number of accidents in Butler Country, the claim that the reconstruction of highways would be successful bases on wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
To conclude with, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons ,and therefore it is unconvincing. The argument would be much stronger if it explicitly stated the reasons that might lie beneath the failure of new regulation. In order to assess the merits of a certain situation, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. In this case, connection between Butler Country and Prunty Country ,and the other possible reasons that might bring about the decrease in accidents in Butler Country are essential. Without this information the argument would be unsupported and open to debate.
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Sentence: Since the legislation did not reached the desired adoptance levels, determining its impact is difficult.
Description: The fragment did not reached the is rare
Sentence: The argument claims that to decrease the number of accidents, Prunty Country was adopted a new legistation that lowers the speed limit on all court highways from 55 miles to 45 per hour.
Error: legistation Suggestion: legislation
flaws:
No. of Words: 646 350
Argument 1 -- not exactly
Argument 2 -- OK
Argument 3 -- OK
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 33 15
No. of Words: 646 350
No. of Characters: 3342 1500
No. of Different Words: 264 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.041 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.173 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.808 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 263 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 197 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 131 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 84 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.576 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.606 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.545 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.286 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.455 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.065 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5