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 argument states that the council of Balmer Island is planning on reducing the number of mopeds rented throughout the day in order to control the number of accidents between the mopeds and the pedestrians. They back their decision on the fact that Seaville imposed the same ban and were able to decrease their percentage of accidents last year.The argument however, fails to address a lot of questions before arriving at this conclusion.For instance we do not know the exact circumstances under which the ban was imposed in Seaville with makes the comparison ambiguous.

The first question which should be asked is whether all the accidents which happened in Balmer Islands were due to the rented mopeds? Not all mopeds present in the island would be the rented ones. There would be a proportion of the mopeds privately owned by the locals of Balmer Islands.If those privately owned mopeds were the cause of such accidents then cutting down on the number of mopeds would do nothing but cost the rental companies a fortune. Instead, the council should look to impose strict laws regarding the reckless behaviours of the moped owners who are responsible for the number of accidents in the island.

The second question which needs to be answered is the number or the exact percentage of people who are the victims of accidents because of these mopeds.The moped might have been the reason of the accidents but if the percentage is quite low then there might not be any need to sanction such a regulation. The accident between the mopeds and the pedestrians might be a very sad state of event even if one of the pedestrain is involved but with such low percentage, cutting down on the number of mopeds rented might affect the economy of the local rental shops as summer time maybe the best time to make some money.

We are also unclear about the conditions under which Seaville’s town council limited the number of rentals last year. The council might have reduced the number of rentals of other commutations such as cars or bikes which might have seen the number of accidents drop.This situation cannot be compared to predicament faced by Balmer Island where mopeds are the real reason of the accidents.We also do not know the number by which Seaville’s town council decreased it rentals which leaves the argument open to interpretations.Maybe they reduced it by 30 or more than that because the situation in Seaville might be worse than what is in Balmer Island or it could be the other way round.

The Argument looks to be very hasty while deriving the conclusion that the decrease in moped rentals would help reduce the number of accidents in Balmer Islands. We also do not know the exact number of accidents or whther it has risen or decreased in the summer months. The cause of the accidents is unknown to us because we do not have any evidence to show that the rise in the number of people visiting the island was the real reason behind the accidents.Therfore a number of questions need to be answered in order to agree upon the conclusion made by the town council of Balmer Island.