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 put forth by the author states that Prunty County should follow the example of Butler County to improve the highway security and consequently, to bring down the likelihood of accidents in the County highways. Five years ago Butler County had introduced some major steps to improve its highway security, including but not limited to increasing the width of the lanes and improving visibility for the drivers at possible blind spots. According to the author, these steps have played the primary role in curbing the number of accidents in Butler County, and therefore, the authorities in Prunty County should undertake the same steps to ensure highway safety.
At first glance, the recommendation put forth by the author certainly seems plausible. However, on evaluating the given suggestion more carefully, it seems that the premise upon which the recommendation has been made leaves a lot to be desired. There are myriads of questions that need to be answered before the efficacy of the recommendation can be determined.
First and foremost, it is important to evaluate the clout of the report that asserts that Butler County has witnessed 25 percent fewer accidents in the past year. The author clearly mentions that 25 percent fewer accidents were reported in the past year, with "reported" being the operative word here. Just because the past year saw 25 percent lesser accidents being reported doesn't mean that the likelihood of the occurrence of an accidence has reduced. It just might be possible that the population of the County or the number of vehicles on the roads as a whole might have decreased within the past five years thereby skewing the data. On top of that, the credibility of the report can also be questioned. If it can be ascertained that the reported numbers are, indeed, credible and that the number of vehicles on the road in Butler County have essentially been equal to or more than there were 5 years ago, it would render the argument more credibility.
Secondly, the example of Butler County is five years old. The changes that have taken place within these five years have not been discussed by the author. It might be possible that the apparent decline in the number of accidents is a result of other variables. One cannot say with certainty that the steps mentioned by the author had a direct correlation with the decrease in the percentage of accidents reported.
Thirdly, one must also evaluate the practicability of the Butler County road improvement project in the Prunty County. It is highly possible, that increasing the width of highway lanes is not feasible in Prunty Country. Also, it is possible that the types of vehicle driven in Butler County vary from that of Prunty County. For example, there is a possibility that people generally drive high end vehicles with a plethora of safety features and in contrast, Prunty highways mostly witness commercial vehicles or low end cheap vehicles that are generally more susceptible to accidents.
All the aforementioned discrepancies need to be addressed before the suggestion propounded by the author can be called a good one.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 519 350
No. of Characters: 2559 1500
No. of Different Words: 227 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.773 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.931 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.658 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 196 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.714 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.417 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.59 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.112 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 387, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...percent lesser accidents being reported doesnt mean that the likelihood of the occurre...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, first, however, if, second, secondly, so, therefore, third, thirdly, for example, in contrast, on top of that
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2634.0 2260.96107784 116% => OK
No of words: 518.0 441.139720559 117% => OK
Chars per words: 5.08494208494 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.77070365392 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.79584138125 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 235.0 204.123752495 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.453667953668 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 830.7 705.55239521 118% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.7988928799 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.428571429 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.6666666667 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.38095238095 5.70786347227 112% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.251944897978 0.218282227539 115% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0794695438455 0.0743258471296 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0581371748768 0.0701772020484 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.115886552817 0.128457276422 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0915217574957 0.0628817314937 146% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.48 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.48 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 120.0 98.500998004 122% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.