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 asserts that Prunty County’s decrease in speed limit has no been effective in improving highway safety. He argues that Prunty should adopt increase lane widths, resurface rough highways, and improve visibility at dangerous intersections. He has come to this conclusion due to the twenty-five percent decrease in accident reports at Butler County after they made these changes. However, before this recommendation can be properly evaluated, three pieces of evidence must be assessed.
First of all, the author must demonstrate that the driving habits of Prunty County residents are comparable to the driving habits of Butler County residents. It is possible that the decrease in accidents at Butler were not directly due to the improvement project. Perhaps Butler drivers generally tend to drive more responsibly than Prunty drivers. If this is the case, then Butler drivers drove more cautiously over unfamiliar grounds following the changes made to their highways. Alternatively, it is possible that Prunty drivers would not change their driving habits regardless of the changes; continuing to speed as they did before. If the above is true, then the author’s argument does not hold water.
Secondly, the author must provide additional information about the roads in Prunty compared to Butler County. Perhaps Butler is a smaller county, only having two highways and more local roads, wile Prunty’s roads contain five highways and fewer streets. It is also possible that Prunty County’s highways are twice as long as the highways in Butler. Since Butler County has fewer highways, they therefore has a lower chance of accidents. Alternatively, Prunty cars must drive on highways for a longer duration, therefore increases the chance of collisions. If either of these scenarios has merit, then changes made to Butler’s highways and their accident reports cannot be generalized to Prunty County’s.
Lastly, are the accident reports in Butler County accurate? Perhaps there were a significant number of accidents in Butler County that were handled privately between residents. It is also possible that the worker responsible for tracking accident reports entered the wrong number into the computer system, or failed to submit a few reports. If the above are true, then it is possible that there were equally, if not more accidents in Butler than Prunty; thus, the decrease in reported are not due to the improvement project.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its lack of supporting evidence. If the author is able to provide additional information to support his claims, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the proposed recommendation to employ an improvement project in Prunty County.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 436 350
No. of Characters: 2274 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.57 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.216 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.678 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 197 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.762 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.428 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.347 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.501 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.119 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 69, Rule ID: NOW[3]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
...ty County’s decrease in speed limit has no been effective in improving highway saf...
^^
Line 10, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...provement project in Prunty County.
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, lastly, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2354.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 436.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.39908256881 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56953094068 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81036968437 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 210.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481651376147 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 728.1 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 36.4665588911 57.8364921388 63% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.0 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8181818182 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.04545454545 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.275046837178 0.218282227539 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0928566178733 0.0743258471296 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0762983597232 0.0701772020484 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.155219446458 0.128457276422 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0707307821489 0.0628817314937 112% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.04 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.6 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.