My first argument, beg for sharp criticisms!

My first time to write a argument, and welcome to critize it, thank you !

Six months ago the region of Forestville increased the speed limit for vehicles traveling on the region’s highways by 10 miles /hour. Since that change took effect, the number of automobile accidents in that region has increased 15%. But the speed limit in Elmsford, a region neighboring Forestville, remained unchanged, and automobile accidents declined slightly during the same 6-month period. Therefore, if the citizens of Forestville want to reduce the number of automobile accidents on the region’s highways, they should campaign to reduce Forestville’s speed limit to what it was before the increase.

Response:
From 22:00 to 23:25

In this argument, the arguer claims that Forestville should take some measure to limit speed in highways by 10 miles as six months before in order to reduce the number of automobile accidents. To support his recommendation, the arguer illustrates some statistical data. Besides, he also makes a comparison between Forestville and Elmsford. This argument sounds reasonable and it does look well-presented, however, it still suffers from some critical fallacies.

The major problem of this argument is the arguer’s assumption that increasing speed limits in Forestville inevitably conduct more automobile accidents. However, he does not provide any evidence to prove these two phenomena have a certain relationship. As we all know, the reasons for the rise of traffic accidents are complicated. Climate influence, for example, is one of the most crucial elements. Suppose that if the six months are the rainy seasons in Forestville, and it is definitely a dangerous attempt to even at a lower speed than limited. In that case, the increase of accidents is foreseeable. Besides, the managements of traffic administration are also significant, and if they can not manage this traffic condition effectively, such as letting some young, inexperienced drivers drive on the highways, this may also conduct more chances to cause
accidents. Consequently, the arguer can not make a convincing reason to draw out his conclusion.

Another flaw of this argument is its statistical data. After all, to investigate whether the traffic accidents increased after the speed limit, six months seems not long enough. In this argument, the arguer compared the accidents rate in Forestville with that in Elmsford only in six months. Obviously these data collected in a half year can not stand for too many meanings. This maybe has been a time, because of the bad weather condition such as flood or rainstorm, that less people driving in highways of Elmsford, and it also conduct the slightly change in automobile accidents.

In addition, the arguer’s comparison of automobile accidents between in Forestville and in Elmsford also has a logical fallacy. There is no evidence to suggest that if the Elmsford takes this measure to increase speed limit, it would also suffer from the rise in accidents. Furthermore, if Elmsford had increased the speed limit while Forestville had not, we could not predict neither the rate of accidents in Elmsford would increase nor that in Forestville would decrease or remain the same.

Overall, though the reasons to decrease the speed limit in Forestville to its original condition, in order to protect the civilians of this region away from the accidents as possible, seem logically and well-presented, before the civilians and officials make a decision to reduce the speed limits, they should take all the necessary factors of the increasing accidents rate into consideration, such as managements, weather conditions and etc, only by this can they make a visible decision.



[ 本帖最后由 kobe317 于 2008-6-22 23:40 编辑 ]