Argument task feedback

[ozzy]

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.

The above stated recommendation is not substantiated with relevant facts and leaves a lot of key evidence and questions unanswered. This recommendation hopes to decrease the number of accidents involving pedestrains and mopeds by half simply halving the number of mopeds rented during the summer season.
Firstly, certain key factors need to be evaluated in order to expect the predicted outcome, is it sufficient to assume that the reason for this accidents is as a result of the proliferation of mopeds, there might be other factors that need to be considered aside the number of mopeds, what is the cause of the accidents? are there specified lanes for mopeds movement? are pedestrain aware of the mopeds route, this questions and many others which are underscores the cause of the accidents would need to be answered. 
Secondly the author assumes that what is applicable in  Seaville is also applicable in Balmer island, the population preffered transport might be different in balmer, hence we find more pedestrains than mopeds users, this  in essence might account for why the reduction in mopeds would reduce accidents. The case might be totally different for Balmer where the preferred choice for transportation is the use of mopeds and reducing the number of mopeds would reduce the available mopeds and increase the number of pedestrains hence this would even result in an alternate outcome; an increase in accidents. Therefore factors such as choice, population, the cause of accidents in these two different neighbouring  cities would be evaluated before this decision would be recommended.

Futhermore, the authour arbitrarilly gives proportionate numbers to the mopeds that needs to be reduced so as to have a 50% reduction in accidents, these recommendation is highly suspect, was there also a 50% cut in rented mopeds in seaville? 

In conclusion what works for one city would not be exactly what works for another, certain key factors might also be responsible for the observed decrease, may be training of mopeds users, awareness to accidents and so on. Reduction might be necessary factor but not suffficient to account for the decrease in accidents, the above and many more considerations would have to be corrected for.