.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 notion that Prunty Country should imitate Bulter Country's approach is cogent at first glance. Because the number of accidents is not decreased by limiting speed and many drivers prefer not to follow the limitation. At the same time, the Bulter Country's method of avoiding accidents had recieved a great outcome. However, the argument is filled up with assumptions and logical mistakes. These assumptions need more evidence to substantiate. Three reasons would suffice to support that idea.
To begin with, the arguer provides no evidence of the validity of the number of accidents. It is hard to deny the possibility that government just surveys a small region of the city. Nonetheless, the overall accident rate had decreased significantly. At the same time, it is also possible that they just calculated the accidents of a period which is too short to make a fair conclusion. Hence, the arguer should provide more evidence to support the conclusion above.
Moreover, the arguer fails to prove the drivers who neglect the speed limitation are on purpose. There is equally possible that these drivers know nothing about the new rule. They would think themselves are just following their normal speed. In that case, the badly following of limitation is caused by the goverment. And the faith of that limitation is less valid. Therefore, it is essential to rule out that explanation by other evidence.
Finally, even if the assumptions above are true, the arguer still fails to substantiate that the same method would also be effective after several years. Time could make everything different. It is impossible to make sure the same renovation would recieve the same feedback. So it is hard to prove the approach before five years would work now. At the same time, Bulter Country may have a different cause of accidents. It means a lot to make the effect of increasing width clear.
To sum up, the argument is less persuasive than seem. It is necessary to offer more information and evidence to rule out other explanations and make the argument more cogent.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 342 350
No. of Characters: 1679 1500
No. of Different Words: 174 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.3 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.909 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.621 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 115 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 88 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 13.68 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.057 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.48 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.266 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.469 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.04 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, hence, however, if, may, moreover, nonetheless, so, still, therefore, to begin with, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1739.0 2260.96107784 77% => OK
No of words: 342.0 441.139720559 78% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.08479532164 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.30037696126 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69986294897 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 180.0 204.123752495 88% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.526315789474 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 551.7 705.55239521 78% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 13.0 22.8473053892 57% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 27.5325552755 57.8364921388 48% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 69.56 119.503703932 58% => More chars_per_sentence wanted.
Words per sentence: 13.68 23.324526521 59% => More words per sentence wanted.
Discourse Markers: 4.64 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0586900781474 0.218282227539 27% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0172347929434 0.0743258471296 23% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0255853624662 0.0701772020484 36% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0323599764385 0.128457276422 25% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0251948037535 0.0628817314937 40% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 9.3 14.3799401198 65% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.28 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.4 12.197005988 69% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.59 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.88 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 78.0 98.500998004 79% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 5.5 12.3882235529 44% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 7.2 11.1389221557 65% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.