(Los Angeles) Seattle-area motorists driving Mazda-branded cars have been forced to listen to public radio constantly since a mysterious bug jammed their multimedia system in late January.
Posted yesterday at 3:30 p.m.
According to the daily Seattle Times and other local media, this anomaly affects several dozen Mazda owners. Some can no longer change radio frequency, stuck at 94.9 FM, the frequency of the local NPR station in the region, which responds to the callsign KUOW. But others are completely deprived of their on-board screen, which constantly resets and therefore prevents them from accessing the rear view camera, GPS, etc.
Even the KUOW station made it the headline of its website. “Captives of purgatory KUOW: motorists unable to change position” headlines the station in large letters. “And we have no idea why”, specifies the article from the outset, whose URL reads as follows: https://www.kuow.org/stories/we-didn-t-mean-to- ruin-your-mazda-s-stereo.
The bug only affects Mazda drivers over the age of four who were listening to KUOW radio, representing the national public broadcaster NPR in Washington state, in the far northwest of the United States.
KUOW is right to apologize
“My media system has been continuously resetting since last week […]. I brought my car to the dealership this morning and they spoke of about 50 customers currently in the same situation, all stuck on KUOW,” one of the affected motorists wrote on a message board.
This anomaly was allegedly caused by the KUOW station itself, with the sending of faulty computer data to the digital radios of the cars which damaged the system.
“Between January 24 and 31, a Seattle-area radio station sent image files that had no extension name, which caused issues on some 2014-2017 Mazda vehicles with older software. “said the automaker in a statement sent to the GeekWire site.
According to an expert interviewed by the Seattle Timesthe multimedia system computer should not have attempted to open a file whose format it did not recognize, but it did so anyway and was damaged in the operation.
The replacement part costs $1,500 and is out of stock, the newspaper said.
Mazda, which did not respond to AFP’s requests for the bug on Wednesday, is expected to bear the cost of warranty repairs.
With The Press