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The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette.
"On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during 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 the island's moped rental companies from 50 per day to 25 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of rentals, the town council will attain the 50 percent annual reduction in moped accidents that was achieved last year on the neighboring island of Seaville, when Seaville's town council enforced similar limits on moped rentals."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
My response:
Admittedly, traffic control and accident reduction are usually serious problems a city faces. The Balmer Island's intention to improve the situation is admirable. However, without the following questions answered, the feasibility of the city's suggestions becomes doubtful.
The first question is what is the relationship between the population growth and the rapidly increasing accident rate? It appears from the letter to the editor that somehow these two are closely related. However, the author failed to provide a more defined correlation between the two. Assume if the population accretion has contributed significantly to the accident occurrence, the town council's action would appear to be reasonable. In other words, the causal relationship between the population increase and the moped accidents naturally lead to the mentality of reducing mopeds to reduce the accident rate. However, if the accidents were led to by other factors, say the weather of Balmer Island has been abnormally foggy through the past year, the town council might be going to the wrong direction tackling with the accident situation.
The investigation of the major accident causes leads to the question of who, the pedestrian or the moped, most often takes responsibility in the accident? If in most cases, an accident struck because the pedestrian violates traffic law by crossing a street on red or walking in vehicle only lanes, it is the pedestrians that need traffic lessons not the number of mopeds rentals that needs to be curtailed. On the contrary, if it were the mopeds that disrespect the law by speeding, ignoring traffic lights or not granting the pedestrians the right of way, it is an option for the city council to limit the number of mopeds on the road but many other options, such as educating the drivers better or creating more rigid penalty regulations, also take effect. Thus, in this sense, the city should take a second look into alternative options since "mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation" on the island and the city wants to legislate to the residents' best convenience.
One support for the author's suggestion from the paragraph is the successful example of Seaville Island. However, unclear about how comparable the Seaville case is to the Balmer Island one, the argument keeps the readers wonder if the success of Seaville can be copied onto Balmer Island. If mopeds weren't as popular on Seaville Island, the geographic landscape of Seaville were rather hilly while that of Balmer were flat or the population density of Seaville were only half of Balmers, the policy transplantation would become unsuitable. It would not affect the residents of Seaville as much as the ones of Balmer Island because Seaville's residents could favor other transportation method such as biking; cutting the moped rentals on Seaville might really have contributed to the accident reduction because their hilly roads aren't suitable for mopeds anyway; and with less population density and the rental cunts of the mopeds, it is predictable that the rate of pedestrian-moped collision would be lowered in Seaville, however, the bicycle-pedestrian accident might increase because perhaps people turn to bicycles when they are limited with moped usage. In this case, the effectiveness of Seaville's moped rental control in their own city becomes questionable. Balmer's adoption to their ideas might become dangerous as well.
Although it is plausible for the city to be responsive to emerging problems, taking slipshod actions without careful measurement and prediction can deteriorate the problem and cause the residents' concerns. Therefore, before making new policies and adopting successful cases from elsewhere, it is rather necessary for the city council to think through whether the new policy will serve the residents to their best interest and remedy the situation without cause other problems, and whether the paragon of others would be practically suitable in the current case. |
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发表于 2012-10-22 08:20:04
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