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.

The author of this proposal has noticed that recent efforts to curb highway accidents by decreasing the speed limit has not helped to decrease accidents. The author then proposes to undertake similar actions taken by another county called Butler County and assumes that it will also decrease. However, there is a lot of evidence that needs to be taken into consideration before any action takes place.

Firstly, though the speed limit has been lowered and still there is no apparent decrease in accidents, this action should not be considered failed just yet because, it has only been one year since the change has been implemented. What this means is that there may be more highway patrol officers coming to help moniter the highways to enforce this rule. In addition, there could also be proposals that the county government may be currently considering that would also lead to a decrease in accidents, namely steep fines for speeding, and mandatory community service. Thus, though the proposal may not seem like a good one now, it may be so in the near future when the laws get more strict. As a law’s punishements increase, people’s complicance will increase. Since just posting signs up will not be enough to convince people to drive slower, the author may be wrong in her conclusion that current efforts are not working.

In addition, the relative percentage statistic in Butler county may be problematic. Although there is an overall decrease, the percentage comparison of Butler County’s accidents may represent an even higher amount of accidents as compared to Prunty County’s. This means that Butler county can have 800 accidents a year, while Prunty may be only concerned with 300 accidents per year. With this possible information in mind, the road improvements that have been done in Butler County may not do anything to reduce the amount of accidents in Prunty county since there could be many fewer motorists in Prunty County. With fewer cars on the road, there is less need for widening lanes and making other changes to the roads since there are fewer cars to collide with.

Lastly, it is vital to see if the two counties are comparable. If not than the proposed measures in Butler County cannot be done to decrease accidents. It is possible that the roads cannot be widened, are already smooth, and may not have any intersections with low visibility at all. Furthermore, it is possible that drivers in Butler county are in general less risky in terms of aggressive driving and may have more experienced drivers who are less likely to be involved in an accident. If the above statements are true, then the proposed changes in Butler county cannot be applied to Prunty county because the roads cannot be physically altered and that things not involving the highway itself (daring driving and driving experience) are the problem.

In conculsion, there is a lot of evidence that needs to be taken into account since the author makes many assumptions. More evidence is needed before any big changes are made needlessly.

Votes
Average: 8.2 (3 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 64, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...see if the two counties are comparable. If not than the proposed measures in Butle...
^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, so, still, then, thus, while, in addition, in general

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

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 40.0 19.6327345309 204% => Less to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 24.0 12.9520958084 185% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2553.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 510.0 441.139720559 116% => OK
Chars per words: 5.00588235294 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.75217629947 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64154909522 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 240.0 204.123752495 118% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.470588235294 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 806.4 705.55239521 114% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => 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: 56.0075715646 57.8364921388 97% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.571428571 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2857142857 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.66666666667 5.70786347227 99% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.188749141553 0.218282227539 86% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0657828628615 0.0743258471296 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0619801132152 0.0701772020484 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106365199007 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0635779735393 0.0628817314937 101% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.07 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.42 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 98.500998004 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => 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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 510 350
No. of Characters: 2474 1500
No. of Different Words: 238 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.752 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.851 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.476 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 188 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 123 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.86 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.542 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5