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 patro

Essay topics:

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.

Because of the failure of speed limit regulation, the author claims that Prunty County should execute the same method to improve road condition, such as increasing lane widths, resurfacing rough roads and enabling higher visibility at dangerous intersections, to reduce car accidents. However, the claim seems to be eloquent at first glance, it reveals logical flaws on scrutiny.

To begin with, whether the failure of such an enactment is real should be justified with statistical evidence. The author states that the number of accidents has not decreased. However, it is entirely possible that there’re more vehicles driving in the highways of Prunty County, which is inevitably causing the proliferation of car accidents. Without providing the accident rate(for example, the number of accidents per thousand), it is imprudent to draw the conclusion that the newly imposed regulation has failed.

Moreover, even if the speed limit has failed, mechanical emulating the policy of Butler County may not lead to the expected results. The improvement project in Butler County certainly require a lot of funds. As the local government should be responsible for every expense it spends, the decision to intake the action done by Butler County will never be an easy task. Detailed project plan should be made in order to get the approval from County Council and its residents. Without such a plan, I will not be convinced by the viability of the improvement project. In addition, before making the project plan, the official should also evaluate current highway conditions. If most of the highways are in good conditions, the improvement project seems to be useless.

Also, the author quotes a figure that a 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler County last year in order to prove the success of the improvement project. However, as the figure only stands for the situation in the last year, it is absolutely possible that the figure is an aberration, and the number of car accidents in other years is no difference compared to the figure before the execution of the improvement program. Thus, the author should present more data from a longer period of time to make his statement more persuasive.

In sum, the author wants to introduce the improvement program conducted in Butler County and lower the number of car accidents in Prunty County, but he fails to justify whether such a program is suitable to Prunty County. To bolster his claim, more specific data and a project plan should be done to make it more eloquent.

Votes
Average: 6.6 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 485, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
... should present more data from a longer period of time to make his statement more persuasive. ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'first', 'however', 'if', 'may', 'moreover', 'so', 'thus', 'for example', 'in addition', 'such as', 'to begin with']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.282937365011 0.25644967241 110% => OK
Verbs: 0.151187904968 0.15541462614 97% => OK
Adjectives: 0.07343412527 0.0836205057962 88% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0475161987041 0.0520304965353 91% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0237580993521 0.0272364105082 87% => OK
Prepositions: 0.125269978402 0.125424944231 100% => OK
Participles: 0.0453563714903 0.0416121511921 109% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.74119660074 2.79052419416 98% => OK
Infinitives: 0.036717062635 0.026700313972 138% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.116630669546 0.113004496875 103% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0215982721382 0.0255425247493 85% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00215982721382 0.0127820249294 17% => Some subClauses wanted starting by 'Which, Who, What, Whom, Whose.....'

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2534.0 2731.13054187 93% => OK
No of words: 415.0 446.07635468 93% => OK
Chars per words: 6.10602409639 6.12365571057 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51348521516 4.57801047555 99% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.426506024096 0.378187486979 113% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.298795180723 0.287650121315 104% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.202409638554 0.208842608468 97% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.134939759036 0.135150697306 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74119660074 2.79052419416 98% => OK
Unique words: 209.0 207.018472906 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.503614457831 0.469332199767 107% => OK
Word variations: 55.9382843302 52.1807786196 107% => OK
How many sentences: 18.0 20.039408867 90% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0555555556 23.2022227129 99% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.7901915985 57.7814097925 107% => OK
Chars per sentence: 140.777777778 141.986410481 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0555555556 23.2022227129 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.722222222222 0.724660767414 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 52.9350736278 51.9672348444 102% => OK
Elegance: 2.03883495146 1.8405768891 111% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.412477818968 0.441005458295 94% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.131008373106 0.135418324435 97% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.075037969568 0.0829849096947 90% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.626822553225 0.58762219726 107% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.128651036925 0.147661913831 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.180627831748 0.193483328276 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0677394391791 0.0970749176394 70% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.466134789686 0.42659136922 109% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0560513219893 0.0774707102158 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.281492413418 0.312017818177 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0222713111533 0.0698173142475 32% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.33743842365 60% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.87684729064 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.82512315271 83% => OK
Positive topic words: 1.0 6.46551724138 15% => More positive topic words wanted.
Negative topic words: 7.0 5.36822660099 130% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 12.0 14.657635468 82% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.