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ginor
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发表于 2010-2-1 13:14:56 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

本帖最后由 ginor 于 2010-2-1 15:34 编辑

题目：ARGUMENT18 - The following appeared in an editorial in a Prunty County newspaper.
"In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County recently lowered its speed limit from 55 miles per hour to 45 on all major county roads. But the 55 mph limit should be restored, because this safety effort has failed. Most drivers are exceeding the new speed limit and the accident rate throughout Prunty County has decreased only slightly. If we want to improve the safety of our roads, we should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths and resurfacing rough roads. 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."
字数：509 用时：00:45:00 日期：2010-2-1 11:51:13

In the argument, the speaker cited the evidence results from reported in the newspaper rests on a speed limit in Prunty Country(PC hereafter) do not exert successful. Another piece of the evidence presented to support the argument is that after improving the roads' conditions in Butler Country, the number of reported accidents have inclined. Hence, the author recommends that PC should take the similar action as Butler Country(BC hereafter) in order to reducing accidents. I find this argument vulnerable in several aspects.

To begin with, the author unfair to claims that the new speed limit is failing to effect on reducing the accidents. On the one hand, it mentioned in the argument that most drivers are exceeding the new speed limit, but no more specific information about most drivers comes from and whether those drivers exceeded the speed limit have caused accidents. Perhaps the majority of drivers who exceeded the new speed limit are neither natives nor informed the new speed limit was exerted. However, perhaps they are exceeding the speed limit but have not caused any accidents in PC. On the other hand,since the number of accidents does not incline tremendous, some other possible alternatives might be neglected, such as the past time period of the new speed limit implement is not longer enough to evaluate this measure have made effect on reducing the accidents. Furthermore, the author fails to take into account one or more factors, which might influenced the inefficiency of the new speed limit. For instance, there is the increasing number of people and more inexperienced drivers traveling on the road in PC, or weather condition are always foggy,rain or snow after the new speed limit is exerted,thus the number of accidents reduced slightly due to more automobiles and bad weather condition.

Another major problem relies on the argument is that the author recommends taking the similar action to improve the road conditions as Bulter, which seems to fail to consider result from the difference of two regions, taking the same action might have different effects. Because there no evidence points out the accidents in PC caused by the roads' conditions, it is entirely possible that PC is at an area geographic terrain of more difficult driving condition than BC is, there are more sharp turns or intersections and merging spots where accidents are more likely to occur. For that matter, increasing the land widths and resurfacing rough roads seem to do not make effects on improving PC's driving safety. In addition, the reported accidents in BC were 25 percent fewer do not necessarily to mean that accidents in BC are really reduced. Perhaps accidents in BC keeps in the similar number. However, many accidents occurred but have not reported which resulted in an imagination that BC's accidents were fewer than before.

To sum up, the recommendation lacks credibility because the evidence cited in the analysis does no lend cogent support to what the author maintains. To better access this argument, the author would have to take into account more other possible alternatives presented in the article above.

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