A cartoon of a figure dressed in pink in a green car.
By Neil Ballard.

Dear Reader:

This is how we work.

On Monday, our reporter Yujie was at the California Public Utilities Commission meeting where firefighters and police officers said they would rather not babysit driverless cars stuck in emergency scenes. They mentioned 55 such incidents that had occurred across San Francisco in just the last few months.

So on Tuesday, we asked for the list of those incidents. We got it at 7:44 p.m., and our data reporter Will and managing editor Joe Eskenazi worked to get it up as soon as possible, posting at 1:37 a.m.

We made a fully interactive map, we linked to every incident report, described each one, and pulled out some highlightsโ€”including a time when a firefighter put a cone on top of the self-driving carโ€™s hood to stop it from coming nearer their engine. NPR, The Atlantic and others noted it.

That work took time โ€“ after-hours โ€“ and we want to keep doing itโ€”but we need your support. Oh, and good news today. Mission Local is a finalist for Outstanding Coverage from Lion Publishers.

If you give already, consider bumping up your amount. If you donโ€™t, $5 a month or $60 a year, makes a big difference.

Best, Joe

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By Walter Mackins


It’s Day 10 of our 15-day flash campaign.ย 

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Joe is the executive editor at Mission Local. He is an award-winning journalist whose coverage focuses on politics, campaign finance, Silicon Valley, and criminal justice. He received a B.A. at Stanford University for political science in 2014. He was born in Sweden, grew up in Chile, and moved to Oakland when he was eight. You can reach him on Signal @jrivanob.99.