One In Five Vehicles In The U.S. Has Been Hit With A Recall

2014 will likely go down as the year of the recall in the automotive industry. General Motors is the champion with the most recalls so far with 70 recalls as of today, but other OEMs have been making their mark with their own recalls.

CNNMoney crunched the numbers on the recalls so far in 2014 and figured out that there has been a total of 544 recalls, about two a day. Those 544 recalls have affected 52 million vehicles in the U.S., or about 1 in 5 vehicles. While that figure is disturbing to say in the least, it's made worse as that number has eclipsed the previous record of 30.8 million vehicles back in 2004. With only a couple months left in the year, there's a good chance that we could see a doubling of the 30.8 million vehicles.

What's the cause for this increase in recalls? Mike Rozembajgier, a vice president at Stericycle said the reason for the increase is twofold. OEMs are putting greater diligence on identifying problems and cars are getting more complex.

"We all want our cars to do far more than they did in the past. It takes a lot of gadgets to make that happen, and that adds to complexity," said Rozembajgier.

Source: CNNMoney

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.