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 prompt given above suggests that the technique implemented by Prunty County to increase driver safety has proved to be a failure. The author of the argument therefore gives the example of Butler County and the techniques they implemented which actually proved to be a success. Therefore, the author opines that Prunty County should follow the same. The evidence look compeling at the first glance, but a closer scrutiny unearths possible fallacies on which the author has made certain assumptions and hence could render his stand weak. The paragraphs below highlight a few points that could undermine the author's position.
Firstly, the author suggests that increasing lane widths, resurfacing rough highways and improving visibility at dangerous intersections has proved to have worked successfully for Butler County. What the author fails to consider here is the driving style of people who reside at Prunty County and Butler County. The author has suggested that drivers at Prunty County have failed to abide by the decrease in speed limit and many of them have been caught for offences such as over speeding. This hints towards a reckless driving manner that is prevalent in Prunty County. Therefore, it cannot be categorically stated if adopting measures similiar to Butler County would be helpful. On the contrary, it could be the case that the number of accidents and over speeding cases have not decreased owing to the driving habits of the citizens of Prunty County.
Secondly, the author hints at some of the initiatives that Butler County had undertaken to improve driver safety and prevent accidents. The author states that these measures have been fruitful, since there has been a decrease of about twenty-five percent in accidents that are reported. But these steps, taken by Butler County were taken five years ago. It could be possible that the number of car-owners have decreased in Butler County, due to which the number of accidents being reported has also gone down. This could mean that the road improvement project taken by Butler County cannot be held accountable for the decrease in the number of accidents. Hence, it could also mean that replicating such a feet in Prunty County would not lead to desired results.
Lastly, the author hints at the report of highway patrol to support his point that drivers at Prunty County are over-speeding and hence the decision of lowering the speed limit, to prevent accidents has been a failure. It could be ideal to take a look at the reliability of the report filed by highway patrol. It could be the case that highway patrol are stopping indivduals and extorting money from these people in the name of over-speeding penalties. This would seiously call into question the reliability of author's evidence.
In sum, the evidences and comparisons that the author has made is based upon unstated assumptions, that call into question the credibility of author's evidence. Moroever, a few alternate theories call into question the conclusion that has been drawn by the author. Therefore, it is difficult to predict if the measures taken by Butler County would be a success in Prunty County.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 24 15
No. of Words: 517 350
No. of Characters: 2593 1500
No. of Different Words: 220 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.768 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.015 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.549 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 210 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 125 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.542 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.843 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.583 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.532 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.146 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 31, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...ounty. Secondly, the author hints at some of the initiatives that Butler County had unde...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 704, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[1]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'a foot' or simply 'feet'?
Suggestion: a foot; feet
...t could also mean that replicating such a feet in Prunty County would not lead to desi...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 706, Rule ID: FOOT_FEET[1]
Message: 'foot' is the singular form of 'feet'. Consider using 'foot'?
Suggestion: foot
...could also mean that replicating such a feet in Prunty County would not lead to desi...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, firstly, hence, if, lastly, look, second, secondly, so, therefore, such as, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2651.0 2260.96107784 117% => OK
No of words: 517.0 441.139720559 117% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12765957447 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.76839952204 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61224136427 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 226.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.437137330754 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 818.1 705.55239521 116% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 40.8948516184 57.8364921388 71% => OK
Chars per sentence: 110.458333333 119.503703932 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5416666667 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.95833333333 5.70786347227 87% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => 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: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.239207671584 0.218282227539 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0773022563502 0.0743258471296 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0542295449042 0.0701772020484 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.145044647919 0.128457276422 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0760951468099 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.47 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.28 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 118.0 98.500998004 120% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.