David Penberthy’s article ‘Wrinklies have overtaken the hoons as the highest road death category’ (The Advertiser, September 4, 2014, p.13) is an argument that elderly people are the highest number of people who cause road deaths in fatalities. Penberthy makes his argument by using pathos, logs, and ethos to explain his point of views and persuade readers who may have opposing opinions. Meanwhile, he is a journalist, people can be easily influenced by his authority to make judgments before reading his argument.
Penberthy begins to describe examples of the successful abolition of firearms and illustrates the wishes of the majority. He appeals to emotion to extend readers' views on older drivers and easily …show more content…
He provides data on road deaths of people aged 17-25 and above 65 in the past five years and the most recent year to inform readers that the mortality rate of the elderly has risen in order to affect readers to agree with his point of view. However, the data he provided is lacking in authority. He does not specify the source of the data, and the data does not indicate how many dead old drivers are considered to be faulty and how many dead old people are passengers. The same details of the young rider are not described in detail. As far as we know, many young drivers have shown impatience and they like to accelerate and overtake. At the same time, they like to drink and indulge in drugs and lack of road experience, which all affect them to become responsible drivers. According to a date of Road trauma Australian 2016 statistical summary(Commonwealth of Australia, 2017), there are 136 drivers who aged 17 to 25 and 129 elderly drivers died in traffic accidents. His claim that the elderly are high-risk groups that cause road hazards lacks …show more content…
We can understand that cars that fail to meet safety standards can easily lead to traffic accidents. For example, the brakes are not working properly, the engine suddenly fails to work. However, he does not have any evidence to prove that the car has been driven by the elderly is a broken car, with personal prejudices in it. As far as we know, young people are more likely to drive cars with less safety because they lack the economic basis to buy new cars. Used cars have become their first choice. A recent data by NSW Centre for Road Safety shows that nearly 71 percent of young drivers under the age of 20 have been driving older cars which are more than 10 years (Power,