For over a year my clutch pedal has been noisy - metal on metal. I thought it was the return spring, so I had greased the spring and it's attachment points. This past several months there has been some sideways movement in the clutch pedal during use, and it has been getting more and more difficult to shift gears without grinding them. So, I bled my clutch hydraulic line and adjusted the clutch pin depth, which initially helped. While under the dash to do this I noticed stress fractures in the thin metal that the pedal's frame is made of, and this made me realize that some day I might experience failure of the clutch pedal and an inability to shift the gears. Well, that happened today, and THANKFULLY it happened right in my driveway, not while I was off somewhere driving around town or on the highway or near a crowd of people. With a sudden inability to shift to a different gear or to neutral, an accident is definitely imminent. This metal fatigue is common on this car and a couple other Mazda models, and the problem should be addressed with a redesign and a recall for all manual transmission cars. This should not be allowed to continue with Mazda pretending this is the first time they've heard of such a thing. Someone could die.