GRE—argument 41：骑车戴不戴头盔？这是个问题

　　The short passage:

　　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."

　　The instruction:

　　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.

　　Introduction

　　（略）

　　The first unstated assumption is that the present number of bicyclists resembles that was ten years ago （百分比之间的大小比较要基于同样的基数）. If it is the case, the number of helmet-wearers does climb. However, there is a high possibility that fewer people choose to ride a bike while traveling to their destinations at present. As a result (表结果的推导词，来调整语流节奏), 80% of the bikers nowadays are unnecessarily larger than 35% of bikers in the old days. This study is thus unable to assume helmet-wearing brings about more danger. Even though the current number of bicyclists might be larger than that in the past, to correlate helmet-wearing with the courage to take more risks is suspicious (本段的难点，能想清楚的可能写不清楚). Specifically, there is no guarantee current helmet-wearers are as law-abiding as their counterparts did in the old time. Risk-takers, if adhering to traffic rules when in search of adventure, are less likely to cause accidents （细节：发生事故与戴头盔的关系不是直线推导关系）. Bicyclists’ awareness of law abiding should be well detected before asserting the more often they wear helmet, the more likely their lives are at stake （小结句也可以不落入‘俗套’）.

　　The second assumption unstated is that bicycle-related accidents refer to the ones caused thoroughly by cyclists （能不能理出unstated assumption是关键）. Clearly, this is significantly flawed as the culprits for these accidents might be multiple. When drivers of automobiles and pedestrian break traffic laws, they might put the lives of bicyclists at stake. Road construction, for another, might disturb a stable traffic environment and thus makes it dangerous to go cycling.If these accidents have been proved to be caused by those who riding bikes, it is dubious they wear helmets while the accidents ensue （很容易忽略的一个点：出事的时候戴头盔了吗？是不是正是因为没戴才出事？）. The stated assumption co-relating helmet-wearing and accidents should be based on the prerequisite that it is helmet-wearers who are involved in these accidents （起到强调信息的作用）. Even though those wreckers are mostly helmet-wearers （递进衔接）, the 200 percent increase of accidents might not be noticeable when the data collected ten years ago was small. The aforementioned flaws make the assumption groundless, based on which the argument tends to be untenable.

　　Conclusion

　　（略）

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