argument20 [Savior小组]第六次作业

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题目：ARGUMENT20 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette.

"The population of Balmer Island increases to 100,000 duing the summer months. To reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island should limit the number of mopeds rented by each of the island's six moped and bicycle rental companies from 50 per day to 30 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of rentals, the town council is sure to attain the 50 percent reduction in moped accidents that was achieved last year in the neighboring island of Torseau, when Torseau's town council enforced similar limits on moped rentals."

Merely depended on a series of groundless assumption and dubious evidence, the author recommends that the town council of Balmer Island(BI) should take the measure by limiting the number of rentals of moped and bicycle in order to attain the 50% percent reduction in moped accidents. To support this suggestion, the author points out that the Torseat's town council nearby enforced similar limits on moped rentals and reduced the accidents in moped accidents during last years. In addition, the author advises that the town council of BI should limit the number of mopeds and bicycles rented every day in order to reduce the number of accidents. However, I find the argument suffers several critical respects as follows.

To begin with, the author makes a false assumption that it is extremely necessary for the town council of BI to take some measures to prevent the accidents from taking place. The author draws this conclusion result from he / she makes a false premise that there are many accidents appeared in this town. However, such situation can not clearly been observed. It is very likely that the rate of accidents in this town is very low. The author dose not point out what the number of accidents is and what is the main factor to lead to these accidents. Besides, the accidents which are effected by moped, the harmful situation is always not heavily serious, it is not like the accident produced by automobile. Therefore, the argument does not indicate the concrete evidence that it is necessary for the town to reduce the number of accidents.

Moreover, even if there are largely high level rate of the accident in the BI, it dose not mean that the rental mopeds lead to most accidents.  The author assumes that through controlling the number of the rental moped will reduce accidents. But this is quite unfair for the companies of rental moped. The argument does not show that there are how many mopeds in this town except the rental ones. It might be the case that there are a great number of mopeds in this town, while the rental ones are only very few part. If so, the most accidents might produce by the other mopeds rather than the rental ones.  Thus, the suggestion of limiting the number of rentals is not accepted widely. If it is accomplished, it will reduce the profit of company of the rental moped.

Last but not least, Torseau's town council successfully reduced the number of the accidents by limiting the number of rentals, it dose not mean BI also will obtain the same result by the same ways. The experience of Torseau's town is not suitable for BI. In this argument, there is no any evidence shows that both two towns exist the same problems. It is likely that BI's problems are extremely different from Torseau. Moreover, there in no evidence to provide to the number of accident in Torseau is less than BI. It is likely that the number of accidents which has been already reduced 50% is still more than BI's. Therefore, without a more wide study the respective situation of two towns, the author should not definitely come to the conclusion.

To sum up, the argument is not wholly persuasive as it stands. The author lacks elementary for knowing about the situation of the accident and the location. It is very ridiculous merely depended on other experience to take some suggestions. To make the argument more convincing, the author would have to provide more specific evidence that the exact number and harm of accidents, and that the number of accidents produced by the rental mopeds.