ARGUMENT65 =August Rush=小组第6次作业 尾羽

尾羽UID: 2482591

TOPIC: 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."

尾羽UID: 2482591

WORDS: 455          TIME: 01:04:05          DATE: 2009-8-1 22:21:11

Basing on the fact that a safety effort to limit speed on all major country roads in Prunty County(PC) has failed, and supposing that an improvement project had been implemented in Butler County(BC) five years ago is effective that supported by recent report, the author accordingly conclude that PC should have a project as same as the one undertook in BC to improve the safety of their roads. It seems to be an rational deduction, while a close examination would reveal how groundless it is.

To begin with, the author fails to consider all the details that may cause the failure of the safety effort limiting the speed from 55 mph to 45 on all county roads in PC. Here are some other possibilities. Firstly, people in PC who exceed the new speed limit are full of enthusiasm about drinking while the advising or punishment is not efficient to reduce the amount of drunk people to make traffic accidents. Secondly, PC might be a district surrounded by mountains so that the most county roads are dangerous to drive next to cliff. For that matter, except the factors that most drivers whose cars are over speed, and that the accident rate has decreased slightly in PC, other aspects may also contribute to the failure of this limitation of speed in PC. Unless the author have a more comprehensive consideration, the deduction could not be acceptable.

What further weakens the conclusion is the fact that the improvement project was completed in BC five years ago. The common sense informs us that five years, for a county road, is a long-term time to be reconstructed or repaired necessarily. It is possible that to increase lane widths and resurface the rough roads five years ago is a kind of anticipation for the increasing amount of cars to adopt a more serious traffic condition rather than merely for the decreasing the number of traffic accident. Furthermore, the author may ignore to present  the explanation about why the reported accidents were only 25 percent fewer this past year then were five years ago. The decreasing extent of 25 percent may not be a significant decline in a data of calculation for the traffic accidents in a county. It is not persuasive evidence to convince that the decline is caused by the improvement project rather than the 55mph speed limit.

In sum, the conclusion of this argument is not well reasoned. To make it more logically acceptable, the author would have to demonstrate more detailed investigations about the specific reason of unsafe traffic condition and appropriate deduction such as what is the different  circumstance of the two counties to determine whether the measure implemented in BC would be effective as same as in PC.