Good people of /r/Mazda, hear my tale. I’ve had a frustrating morning but this is more of a “Mazda, take pity and think this through” than a flat-out complaint.

It’s 15 degrees in Chicago this morning. Got out to my 2022 Mazda3 sedan (which I do drive regularly, and has not had any trouble lately) and found the battery was flat dead - doors won’t unlock electronically, and when unlocked manually, no indicators lit inside at all. Dead as can be. This is the second battery problem I’ve had this year, but hey, it’s 15 degrees and these things happen, right? That’s why I have a jump starter in the trunk - and this is where things get dumb.

The trunk, like the locks, has an electronic lock. Normally, very handy. Today, I need the manual release. Where is that? Well, it’s in the trunk, so I need to lower the rear seats… Whose releases are also _in the trunk._ In daily use, this can be inconvenient - open the trunk, pull the releases, lower the seats, fight the headrest off in the few inches where it can clear the roof - and I’d really prefer to have releases in the cab… But today, it’s a little more trouble - today, I have to pop off a cover behind the seat, unscrew an “anti-theft tab” (fortunately, I’ve passed a background check and own a Phillips head screwdriver), and release the smaller back seat that way.

But here’s where the real fun begins. The manual trunk release I mentioned earlier? It’s all the way _through_ the trunk, on the inside of the hatch itself. Lucky for me, today I didn’t have much in the trunk, and I had some maneuvering room. And, also lucky for me, I’m an able bodied person of reasonably modest stature – because someone with a bad back, a big middle, or anything stored in their trunk would, at this point, be SOL until a neighbor with jumper cables took pity or AAA showed up.

As it was, I crawled in far enough to pull that inconvenient release for the second seat so that I could then reach the other, yet-more-inconvenient release for the trunk and get at my jump starter.

tl;dr: The seat and trunk release situation could use some improvement. I think in normal operation, we’d all like to be able to lower the seats from inside, but in an emergency, needing a screwdriver to do it is just stupid. And similarly, the trunk should have a release closer to the seat-backs, so it can be opened from the cab when the seats are down.

Final PSA: If you have jumper cables or an emergency starter battery, keep them in the cab and not the trunk.