Downtown Greensborough is a major financial center in which many citizens either drive or rely on public transportation to get to work. This setup has led up to a spate in the number of pedestrians who have been struck and killed by vehicles. In an effort to curb the number of pedestrian-related fatalities, Greensborough has installed speed reduction signs at the six city intersections at which the highest numbers of fatalities have occurred in the last year. The Greensborough city government predicts that the number of traffic fatalities will significantly decrease once the speed reduction signs have been installed.
The government’s plan to install speed reduction signs in order to decrease fatal traffic accidents leading to death of pedestrians is rife with logical fallacies. Moreover, the success of the plan depends on a number of unwarranted assumptions. If any of these assumptions doesn’t hold true, the plan will have no effect on the number of fatalities.
First and foremost, the fact that people drive or depend on public transport to get to work, has been identified as the cause of the increase in the number of pedestrains hit and killed by vehicles. Howover, this could only be true if most of these accidents take place around the time when most people commute to and from work. Without having any information about the time when most accidents occur, this reasoning is fallacious.
Furthermore, it is assumed that the reason behind the spate in the number of pedestrain fatalities is the high speed of the vehicles. The two matters could completely be unrelated. A possible reason for the increased fatalities could be the carelessness of the pedestrain or lack of adequate cross-walks. Furthermore, it could be that an increase in the number of vehicles or pedestrians, for instance an increase in the population, lead to the spate in the number of such accidents, and that niether the drivers nor the pedestrians are to blame. In order to increase the chance success, the government should investigate the cause of the accidents, by using traffic cameras for instance, instead of assuming high speed to be the sole cause.
Even if high speed was the cause of the increase in fatal traffic accidents, there is no guarantee that installing signs would help mitigate the situation. In fact this could be one of the least effective ways to combat this problem. A number of more drastic measures could be taken, such as educating the public about the dangers of driving unsafely, installing traffic cameras at the intersections, increasing traffic fines, and even revoking careless drivers’ licenses.
All in all, the government’s plan to decrease the number of pedestrian fatalities due to being struck by vehicles is likely to fail, since its success severely depends on unstated assumptions. In order to address this problem better, the government should gather more information about the cause of the accidents and impose strict laws to preclude the cause.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 390 350
No. of Characters: 1928 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.444 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.944 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.736 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 138 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 78 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.375 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.11 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.354 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.593 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.089 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...s occur, this reasoning is fallacious. Furthermore, it is assumed that the reas...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, furthermore, if, moreover, so, as for, for instance, in fact, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => 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: 1995.0 2260.96107784 88% => OK
No of words: 389.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.12853470437 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44106776838 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89069492138 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 185.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.47557840617 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 604.8 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.6071249369 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.6875 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.3125 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.75 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.147773829079 0.218282227539 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0517755286371 0.0743258471296 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0529463453703 0.0701772020484 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0846643162372 0.128457276422 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0362902719778 0.0628817314937 58% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.77 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.2 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 83.0 98.500998004 84% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => 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.