The Glitch That Trapped Mazda Drivers in an NPR Twilight Zone

Imagine starting your car one morning, only to find the central infotainment screen frozen. The radio is on, but you can't change the station. The navigation is gone. Bluetooth is dead. The backup camera is just a black screen. You're permanently tuned to your local National Public Radio affiliate, trapped in an endless loop of news and commentary. This digital nightmare became a reality for a number of Mazda owners in the Seattle area in early 2022, all thanks to a tiny, seemingly insignificant data error.

The Seattle Radio Mystery

Drivers of Mazda models from 2014 to 2017 began reporting that their infotainment systems had suddenly and inexplicably failed. The common thread? They were all tuned to 94.9 FM, the frequency for KUOW, Seattle's local NPR station. The systems were completely bricked, stuck in a reboot cycle or frozen solid, rendering all functions except the audio from that one station useless. Dealerships were initially stumped, diagnosing the issue as a failed Connectivity Master Unit (CMU) — the brain of the system — and quoting a staggering $1,500 for a replacement.

A Digital Detective Story: The Culprit

As reports mounted, a pattern emerged. The issue wasn't a random hardware failure; it was a software bug triggered by something the radio station was broadcasting. The technology in question is HD Radio, which allows stations to transmit digital data alongside their analog audio signals. This data can include song titles, artist information, and even images like station logos or album art. The investigation revealed that KUOW had started broadcasting a new logo image file, but with a critical flaw: the file name had no extension. Instead of sending something like 'logo.jpg' or 'logo.png', the system was pushing out a file named simply 'logo'.

Why It All Broke Down

The Mazda Connect infotainment system's software, it turned out, was not prepared for this scenario. When it received the image file without an extension, its code didn't know how to process it. Lacking proper error handling or data validation for such a case, the system's operating system would crash. Upon rebooting, the radio would immediately tune back to the last station — KUOW — and attempt to download the same corrupted data, triggering the crash all over again. This created an inescapable boot loop that effectively destroyed the unit's software, making it impossible to fix without a full hardware replacement.

KUOW was unaware its broadcast was causing the issue and quickly worked to resolve it. A spokeswoman told the BBC, "KUOW has been in contact with Xperi, the company that owns the HD Radio technology, about the issue. We are working with them to determine what happened."

Resolution and Reflection

Once the cause was identified, KUOW stopped broadcasting the problematic image files. More importantly, after the story gained media attention, Mazda North America stepped in. The company acknowledged the issue and agreed to cover the full cost of replacing the failed CMUs for affected customers, even if their vehicles were out of warranty. While the resolution was a relief for drivers, the incident serves as a fascinating and cautionary tale about the fragility of modern vehicles. It highlights how a single missing '.jpg' in a data stream can lead to catastrophic failure in a multi-thousand-dollar component, reminding us that the cars we drive are becoming increasingly complex computers on wheels, susceptible to the same kinds of bizarre bugs that plague our phones and laptops.

Sources

• BBC News: Mazda drivers' radios stuck on NPR after broadcast error
• The Seattle Times: How a Seattle radio station crashed some Mazda infotainment systems
• GeekWire: How an NPR station in Seattle inadvertently bricked some Mazda infotainment systems