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题目："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.
Grounding on the 10-year-long survey of effectiveness of wearing a bicycle-helmet, supposing that thepercentage of all bicyclists who reported wearing helmets have increased from30 to 80, and another study that the number of bicycle-related accidents hasincreased 200 percent during the same period, the author accordingly drew aconclusion that government should not encourage riders to wear helmets. Carefullyexamination of these supporting evidences, however, reveals that it isunconvincing in some aspects To begin with, byrelying on that the 200% increase in the number of accidents, is likely thatthe government should not encourage riders to wear helmets. However the authorhas not provided evidence that the bicycle-related accident rate is also increasingduring the same period. Common senses tell us that the riding accidents increasebecause there are more people using bicycles than those 10 years ago. Although the number of thisaccidents which is lead by the increasing of bicyclists has increased 200%, itis entirely possible that this accident rate remain unchanged or keepsdecreasing in the 10-year period. Without considering and ruling out thepossibility of increasing riding accident rate, the conclusion based on the assumptionthat this type of accidents is increasing cannot convince me. Moreover, althoughthe number of the riders wearing helmets shows the same increase trend as does thenumber of bicycle-related accidents at the same period, it does not necessarilyprove that those who wearing helmets are the people who have happened thebicycle-related accidents.
Since the authorhas not provide any information about the people who have taken this type ofaccidents, it is entirely possible that these people were not wearing helmetswhen the accidents happened. Perhaps those who wear helmets are more carefulthan those who do not wear helmets, when riding on a road , for protecting anyaccidents from happening. Without considering and eliminating this possibility,the conclusion drew on the assumption is not convincing.
Last but not least,the author assumes that all other factors affecting this pattern accidentsremained unchanged in past 10 years. Yet the author fails to provide anyevidence to support this assumption. It is quite possible that other factors,such as the speed of riding bicycles, obeying the traffic rules and so on, canlead this accident. Perhaps these riding behaviors are not the causes of the accidents,it is more likely that all these accidents happened in the busiest traffic periodand thus were caused by the careless drivers or those who do have poor drivingbehaviors. The author cannot convince me the assumption, unless he or she hasruled out any other factor affecting the bicycle accidents.
In sum, theconclusion reached in this argument is logically flawed and thereforeunconvincing. To strengthen it, the author should provide clearer evidence,such as the bicycle-related accident rate, more detail information about riderswho have taken accidents and the detailed traffic situation of these accidents.Moreover, I would suspend my judgment about the trustworthiness of thisargument until the author provides more details about whether wearing helmetsis major cause of bicycle-related accidents and whether the government should persuadethe riders do not wear helmets for lowing the happen-chance of bicycleaccidents
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发表于 2014-8-10 13:04:29
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