Verified government source

NHTSA complaint #11735788

This page summarizes an official U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration owner complaint. Use the verification links below to confirm the record directly with NHTSA.

Vehicle

2025 MAZDA CX-5

Manufacturer

Mazda Motor Corp.

Components

POWER TRAIN,UNKNOWN OR OTHER,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE

Dates

Incident: 05/01/2026
Filed: 05/05/2026

Owner complaint summary

Life-threatening, unoccupied rollaway vehicle with personal injury. Possible and/or suspected issues: "Not-P" switch circuit malfunction; "false park"; lack of cross-module redundancy; lack of BCM and PCM redundancy; Diagnostic Blind Spot; lack of Occupancy-Brake interlock; systematic safety failure culminating in unintended, driverless, runaway Zombie vehicle with personal injury. Background Info: * Low mileage, mainly in-town errands driving. * Not previously reported quirks, possible latent defects: liftgate opening that was hit-or-miss requiring multiple unlock trunk-unlock doors + get out of the car manual attempts; intermittent off-shutdown double-tap issue to power off car; ill-timed "rear seat alert". * Reported "engine won't start" resulting in three key FOB battery replacements and a locked key FOB. Day of Incident: * Auto-lock and the EBS were not used. * Driver intent was to park and unload, then permanently park. Car was in-park twice before ultimately placed in reverse and backed into position, facing downhill on a slight slope and along a left-side stone retaining wall. * Driver thought vehicle was fully in Park. * Attempted open liftgate via "open trunk, open door" routine, which did not work, so I exited the vehicle to try the manual liftgate button, which also did not work. * Three back-and-forth "unlock trunk/doors + manually press liftgate button" did not work. * Note: Upon opening the door or anytime after, I did NOT hear an audible warning that the car was not fully in Park. Nor did the car move/creep in any direction. * Deducing I must need to shut off the car to open the liftgate -- I leaned in and depressed the on/off button. * This caused the car to move forward, driverless, door open and scraping the stone wall, across a secondary road, over an 11" curb, and down a hill before stopping due to a tree. * I was injured. Pinned between a narrowing door and the car, I tried to turn the wheel right before being knocked down/falling

Crash reported1 injuries reported
This is an owner complaint filed with NHTSA (ODI #11735788). It is not automatically an official recall, investigation outcome, or manufacturer admission unless the complaint text itself describes one.

Official record ID (ODI): 11735788. This page is the human-readable source link used across afterwarranty. The raw JSON link proxies NHTSA's public API for machine verification; prefer this page when reading the complaint.