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 given reading passage argues that other approaches that have been undertaken in Butler County roads have to be applied rather than the currently applied one. However, in order to evaluate the argument properly, the county has to examine the following aspects first.
Firstly, the number of cars on Prunty County roads might have increased. In general, the possibility of car accidents increases with the increased number of cars on roads. Perhaps there were a number of people who moved from other counties to Prunty County with their cars last year. Then, there might have been more cars, as result, more accidents happened. That is, the increased accidents are not due to the inefficacy of new policy, reducing the speed limit. In this case, the argument that the county has to apply other policies as they failed with the newly applied policy is weakened.
Secondly, the reason why there were many drivers exceeding the speed limit might be the unawareness of the changed limit. Not everyone is interested in how every policy is changing, so the government or the city council has to inform a new policy strongly with various materials. Perhaps Prunty County did not well inform the changed speed limit, so many drivers thought the limit is still 55 rather than 45 miles per hour. If then, the newly changed policy cannot be evaluated whether it was effective to reduce car accidents as it was not actually applied. Hence, if it is true, the argument cannot hold water.
Thirdly, the current road quality of Prunty County might differ from that of Butler County 5 years ago. Before applying new policies, which were successful in Butler County, the current road conditions of Prunty County have to be evaluated first. Perhaps the road conditions of Butler County five years ago was the nadir, so the major cause of accidents was related to the bad quality of roads. If then, the enhancement of roads might have been beneficial to reduce accidents. However, perhaps the case of Prunty County is different: its roads might have already great conditions. If then, the new policy might not achieve such improvement as the Butler County’s case and the argument is weakened.
To sum up, the argument, as it stands now, is potentially flawed due to its reliance on unwarranted assumptions. If the argument is either one of the cases mentioned above, the argument will not be persuasive.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 402 350
No. of Characters: 1932 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.478 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.806 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.381 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 94 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 61 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.143 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.94 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.81 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.337 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.109 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, firstly, hence, however, if, second, secondly, so, still, then, third, thirdly, well, as to, in general, it is true, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 2.0 11.1786427146 18% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1998.0 2260.96107784 88% => OK
No of words: 402.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.97014925373 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.47771567384 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.47232772826 2.78398813304 89% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.462686567164 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 619.2 705.55239521 88% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 15.0 8.76447105788 171% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 28.0892649018 57.8364921388 49% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 95.1428571429 119.503703932 80% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.1428571429 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.04761904762 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.204637082219 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0688099208933 0.0743258471296 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0630460944542 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.10572770248 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0626086529697 0.0628817314937 100% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.5 14.3799401198 80% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.55 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.07 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.