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 raises concerns regarding the highway safety of Prunty county, where the number of accidents are not decreasing despite taking measures to reduce the speed limit on all county highways. Thus, the argument recommends Prunty County to adopt measures identical to the ones in Butler County to lower the number of accidents. However, the recommendations are not very persuasive as they are in dire need of evidences to further evaluate the argument’s proposal.
First, the argument assumes that Prunty and Butler County are roughly comparable areas, which may not be true. It is possible that one area has more accident prone roads than the other. An alternative possibility could be that the residents in Butler County are more properly trained to drive cars as compared to Prunty County. Perhaps the citizens in Prunty County are not as law abiding as Butler County. If either of these scenarios turn out to be true, then the argument seems to fall apart. Thus, more information is required about both the regions to fairly evaluate whether the two counties are comparable or not.
Second, the proposal to reduce the number of accidents in Prunty assumes that majority of accidents were caused by drivers exceeding speed limits. It could be probable that the inverse is true that the slower driving cars in residential areas caused majority of the accidents. Perhaps most accidents occurred as a result of driving under the influence of alcohol on major highways at a slow speed. If this turns out to be true, then the recommendation of increasing the number of lanes may not be an effective plan to reduce accidents. Instead, more regulations are needed to penalize the people to not drive after alcohol consumption. Thus, evidences are required to evaluate alternative causes of accidents other than speed limit violations in Prunty County.
Third, the argument purports that the number of accidents in Butler county were 25 percent lower as compared to the accidents in the county five years ago. Reporting the percentage does not represent the total number of accidents. Hence, this information is vague as the actual number of accidents could be higher in Prunty County as compared to Butler County. If this turns out to be true, then the argument does not hold water. Thus, more details on the statistics of accidents is required to evaluate the argument.
In conclusion, the argument is wanting supporting evidences required to support the recommendations to reduce the number of accidents in Prunty County. Once the above asked evidences are provided with satisfactory details, further actions may be taken to improve road safety in Prunty County.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 436 350
No. of Characters: 2188 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.57 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.018 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.646 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 178 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.818 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.773 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.37 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.37 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.102 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 98, Rule ID: COMP_THAN[3]
Message: Comparison requires 'than', not 'then' nor 'as'.
Suggestion: than
... in Butler county were 25 percent lower as compared to the accidents in the county...
^^
Line 5, column 29, Rule ID: PROGRESSIVE_VERBS[1]
Message: This verb is normally not used in the progressive form. Try a simple form instead.
... argument. In conclusion, the argument is wanting supporting evidences required to suppor...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, hence, however, if, may, regarding, second, then, third, thus, in conclusion, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 2.0 11.1786427146 18% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2239.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 436.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13532110092 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56953094068 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70384245751 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.435779816514 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 720.0 705.55239521 102% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 31.7007247616 57.8364921388 55% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 101.772727273 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8181818182 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.59090909091 5.70786347227 80% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.240710808294 0.218282227539 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0789867412941 0.0743258471296 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0704322213227 0.0701772020484 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.151424337529 0.128457276422 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0599833306517 0.0628817314937 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.7 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.53 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.27 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.