Tail Light Switch problems of the 2004 Mazda MAZDA3

The tail lights go out intermittently due to a defective passenger junction box (fuse box). Tapping the box with a screwdriver handle will bring the tail lights back on for a while. This has been a Mazda 3 issue over the years. The should be a recall on this.

I had my mechanic working on replacing a burnt out license plate light when he discovered that the tail lights were not working. He turned the lights off and back on, and the tail lights started working again, turned the lights back off and on again, and the tail lights were back to not working again. He identified the fuse box to be the cause of this issue, as when the tail lights were out, he would hit the fuse box which would then cause the lights to come back on, and he demonstrated this for me. This is a serious safety concern to me and after only a few minutes of internet research I found others were having the exact same issue. I feel very fortunate that I've not been hit from behind. I've called Mazda and they said they were not aware of a known issue and there were no recalls on the part, but I've also learned that this part has been reissued 6 times. This makes me think it has to be a known issue, otherwise why keep modifying the part?.

While driving on the freeway at 65 mph at night, my lower dash (radio, hvac) and steering wheel controls lighting went out for about ten minutes, and then came back on. This started happening intermittently from that point on, shutting off and coming back on randomly, with the lights being out continuously once for about 30 minutes while driving at night in traffic. The safety concern is that I just discovered the tail lights were also going out at the same time. Indications are that the cause is a defective passenger junction box (pjb). This is a serious safety issue and an unacceptable engineering flaw which appears to affect other drivers of this vehicle model as well. Due to prohibitive cost of jsb replacement and uncertainty of the integrity of that part itself, it may be necessary to install a failsafe independent wiring solution for the brake lights to ensure required reliability.