To clarify: Removing the SD Card from your Mazda will not damage the card or the system. Fact.
I've done it at least a dozen times.
Fact: damage or corruption occurs on a removable storage medium when that device is being written to and you remove it during that act. To clarify: the act of being written to.
Fact: the Mazda system never writes to the SD card beyond the initial markup at 66 miles to marry it to your car. All it does is read the SD card.
A phone has an ejection tool because it's the only way to flush mount a sim card tray. The sim card tool has nothing to do with a safe removal.
You can remove an SD card from a phone without shutting it off also.
Fact: the reason Microsoft and Apple tell you to dismount drives before removal is to protect yourself from you. And to cover their asses.
Apple support, can I help you?
I lost all the pictures on my memory stick.
Did you eject the card?
No.
Sorry, can't help you.
If you are moving 1,000 photos from your digital camera to an SD card and then forget that act is happening behind the scenes because you went to do something else on your pc while that was happening and you pull that card out = corruption. If you had dismounted it = safe. Because it it makes sure all file write operations are shutdown.
IF YOU REMOVE A CARD WHILE IT IS BEING WRITTEN TO IT CAN MAKE YOU LOSE DATA OR CORRUPT YOUR CARD.
Protecting yourself from you. Ever hear of someone accidentally installing a program to a memory stick? I have. Go ahead and pull that stick while your running a program you accidentally installed on the stick. Corruption.
Removing the medium while it is not being written to is the equivalent of ejecting a cd that is playing music. It really is.
Source: I am in IT and have been for 20+ years. I have pulled literally 1,000's of memory sticks and other media and you name it from PC's without dismounts for years and have not once ever encountered not even ONE corrupt memory stick that was damaged because of the act of removing a stick without a dismount.