31号考试了，麻烦大神帮看看第一篇argument

ln0618

Argument 41
The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"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.
In the argument, the author claims that the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets in order to reduce the number of serious injures from bicycle accidents. Nevertheless, careful scrutiny of this argument reveals several grave fallacies, albeit it may appear plausible at a cursory glance.

First of all, a threshold problem arises in this argument that the author presumes that the augment of the number of bicycle-related accidents is enormous. 200 percent augment seems huge, however, this contention is open to a number of interpretations. Lacking of the information of the number of bicycle-related accidents of both present and ten year ago, the author fails to convince me that the rate of accident has increased. There is a possibility that the number of the bicyclists increases a lot, yet, the rate of accident is maintain the same or even below that of ten years ago. Without cogent evidence, by no means could the author confirm that the condition of injures from the bicycle accident gets worse.

Moreover, there is still an apparent flaw lies that the author presumes that the reason for the bicycle accidents is that the bicyclists feel safer and take more risks because they are wearing helmets. It may be reasonable that the bicyclists reduce some vigilance when bicycling, but the author provides no evidence on conducting the thoughts of the bicyclists and it is quite possible that the bicyclists, who are wearing helmets, care more about safety issues rather than take risk to do something dangerous.

Ultimately, even the evidence turns out to uphold the foregoing assumptions, a crucial problem remains that the author presumes that the number of bicycle-related accident can be reduced through educating people about bicycle safety. Nevertheless, other possibilities will cast doubts on the author’s presumption. For example, some people will not keep the safety education in mind, and they still lack awareness to keep an eye on safety. Even people are aware of the bicycle safety, the author cannot preclude the possibilities that other reasons other than bicyclists themselves to cause the accident, such as the quality of bicycles and the conditions of the roads.

In retrospect, the argument is unconvincing at its stand. To better assess the soundness of the assertion, the author should mull over his assumptions and then furnish it with cogent evidence so as to pave the way for a more tenable argument.



1. 作者猜想事故数目是十年前的200%是一个很大的值。但是缺少十年前和现在事故的数目，很可能在十年内骑车的人数增加了，虽然事故数目增加了，但是事故率并没有增加，这也不能说明injures 变的严重了。
2. 作者猜测出事故的原因是骑车的人认为带了安全帽就安全了从而take risk。 但这些都是作者的猜想而已，根本没有证据，很可能带上安全帽的人安全意识更多。即使戴安全帽的人是怎么想的，但也未必会发生事故。
3. 作者猜想经过教育就会减少事故发生。这是没有根据的，教育不一定对所有骑车人都有效，有些人并不把这些教育keep in mind。即使他们都听从了教育，但是事故发生的原因很可能不在于他们没有安全意识，而是由于其他原因导致了事故，比如说车的质量，已经道路安全问题等。

竹林中人

这篇文章本身分析的不错，只是模板的痕迹太严重了