"THE LETTER TO EDITOR" - Jennie Viratham Poonsawat

In “Letter to Editor”, Robert R. Raywift claims that parking should be limited from 2 a.m. To 6 a.m. and overnight parking on every street in Moorburg should be prohibited. Robert R. Raywift provides a number of arguments to support his suggestions. Though the letter seems to be reasonable, there are still some flaws in some arguments. 

First of all, Robert mentions that traffic on some streets are caused by factory workers of 6 a.m. shift and if there was no car parking on the streets, the streets would not be busy. However, this argument is not efficient because argument does not provide enough reasons and effective evidence for prohibiting the overnight parking . Furthermore, he claims that overnight parking is not preferable and this is so bad that it should be eliminated. This statement is only a ‘false cause’ since by being undesirable is not a good reason to oppose the overnight parking and the cause is unreasonable. 

Second, Robert states that all clever citizens would consider the decrease in accidents to be desirable. This statement tends to have a fallacy which is ‘poisoning the well’ because by saying “all”, it makes people feel like if they do not regard the near disappearance of accidents desirable, those people are not intelligent. This kind of fallacy will discourage the people who oppose the idea and will make them feel concern about the problem.

Third, he argues that the Chief of Police, Burgess Jones, conducted an experiment on Marquand Avenue by placing the signs prohibited parking from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. As a result, during the period from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., not an accident occurred. Burgess Jones ran the experiment in order to confirm that overnight parking should be limited. In fact, this street is only one of the busiest streets Robert mentions so this evidence is not enough to support the argument, due to ‘hasty generalization’. Robert is using the method ‘appeal to authority’ since the Chief of Police represents power and authority but he is not an expert in the traffic problems. Therefore, by including people or a person who is not a professional to support the argument, it is not credible and makes the experiment unreliable.

Finally, Robert also indicates that his opponents of the suggestions do not understand the real meaning of “safe” as they say the conditions are quite safe now. This argument has a defect because Robert accidentally includes ‘equivocation’ in the argument since he shifts the meaning of the word “safe”. And he attacks the opponents using the fact that they do not what "safe" really means and this is possible to be a 'personal attack'.