Hospital statistics regarding people who go to the emergency room after roller-skating accidents indicate the need for more protective equipment. Within this group of people, 75 percent of those who had accidents in streets or parking lots were not wearing any protective clothing (helmets, knee pads, etc.) or any light-reflecting material (clip-on lights, glow-in-the-dark wrist pads, etc.). Clearly, these statistics indicate that by investing in high-quality protective gear and reflective equipment, roller skaters will greatly reduce their risk of being severely injured in an accident.

Essay Response:

The argument regarding importance of wearing protective clothing and/or light -reflective material might look convincing at first sight. But the argument depends on some serious fallacies, in both, statistical and explanation, which makes the argument itself less persuasive and this might discourage people to skate because of psychological and financial matters come into account.

At first, the argument never mentioned whether the statistics is based on only one hospital. If it is such, then how can you make a major decision based on that?

The argument did not mention the percentage of roller-skater, which goes to emergency. If it is a very small percentage, it will be unfair to impose such investment to the normal skaters, who only skate for fun in the neighborhood parks.

As mentioned in the argument, there are two types of gears - reflective, which can be also termed as preventive (such as reflecting materials) and protective gears (such as helmet, knee pads). The preventive gears are used to warn other drivers on the road. And the protective gears are intended to protect the roller-skaters from serious injuries. A statistics of major injuries while wearing either preventive or protective gears or wearing both would have made the argument interesting.

The argument does not make any valid distinctions between high-quality and low or medium-quality gears. Does the quality of the gears make a big difference? There may be a small amount of quality differences between gears, which doesn't make big margin in the severity of the injury.

In addition, the argument makes a description, which illustrates that the accidents are caused because of not wearing proper preventive or protective gears. But that is not accurate, that mainly depends on the skill-set and consciousness of skaters. The argument also mentioned that the severe accidents occurred while skating in streets or parking lots. Usually people skate in parks or other designated skating rinks.

The argument for safety gears may encourage people to be safe and may save lives as well. But a complete understanding and benefits need to be there, which would motivate skaters to use these safety gears. Finally, a false thinking of more & expensive gears could be more dangerous than wearing no gears at all.