"A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of bicycle-related accidents has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets, and they take more risks as a result. Thus, to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents, the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
While it might be true that wearing helmet might cause bicycle riders to drive irresponsibly; however, the author's argument does not make a cogent sense. It is easy to understand that number of bicycle accidents might have increased during past ten years, but this argument is rife with holes and assumptions therefore, not strong enough to lead to encourage bicycle riders to do not care about wearing helmets.
The author mentions that today the number of bicyclists who wear helmet is nearly 80 percent compare to ten years ago which was 35 percent. However, the author does not provide any information about the total number of bicyclists which can make a different perspective. Imagine the total number of bicyclists was 100 ten years ago whereas that number is 200 today and the number of bicyclists who reported wearing helmets has increases from 35 percent to 80 percent now. As a result, the percentage of bicyclist who wear helmet has not increased because the ratio of total riders to riders who wear helmet is same for both comparisons.
In addition, the author implies that the number of bicycle accidents has increase 200 percent; however, the author does not bring explanations about these accidents. For example, a bicycle-related accident could happen because of a car driver's high speed which does not relate to wearing helmets. Moreover, bicycle lane width is important to be mentioned. For example, a bicyclist who do not have enough space to ride might get an accident regardless of wearing helmets. To strengthen his/her argument, the author needs to investigate about all other possible reasons for bicycle-related accidents.
The author indicates that the government should concentrate to educate people to ride carefully to reduce the number of bicycle accidents’ injuries. On the other hand, education about wearing helmet to is not that important to decrease accidents. However, the author does not bring any evidences about this suggestion. We do not know if there is any correlation between riders' recklessness and wearing helmets or not.
The author’s suggestion is persuasive when he or she gathers information about total number of current bicycle riders compared to ten years ago and the descriptions for bicycle-related accidents. After answering these questions, the author can make such a conclusion.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 376 350
No. of Characters: 1925 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.403 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.12 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.756 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 151 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 111 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.118 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.512 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.394 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.394 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.132 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 108, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...rs to drive irresponsibly; however, the authors argument does not make a cogent sense. ...
^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 637, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ar helmet is same for both comparisons. In addition, the author implies that the...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, moreover, so, then, therefore, whereas, while, for example, in addition, as a result, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1970.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 375.0 441.139720559 85% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.25333333333 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.40055868397 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86813109882 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.461333333333 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 608.4 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.1305561944 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.882352941 119.503703932 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.0588235294 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.11764705882 5.70786347227 125% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.335814438667 0.218282227539 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.120049997354 0.0743258471296 162% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.133597519625 0.0701772020484 190% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.185454259184 0.128457276422 144% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.12497964587 0.0628817314937 199% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.17 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.93 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.