WASHINGTON, D.C. -

The U.S. Department of Transportation said the number of recall campaigns and total amount of vehicles impacted reached new highs in 2016.

DOT officials tabulated that there were 927 recall campaigns last year, involving a total of 53,194,177 vehicles. The tally marked the third year in a row recalls surpassed the 50-million mark. That string started when recalls jumped from 20,260,191 units in 2013 to 50,227,771 units the following year.

Fueling last year’s recall spike was the fallout from faulty Takata airbags. On Feb. 27, the Justice Department said Tokyo-based Takata Corp., one of the world’s largest suppliers of automotive safety-related equipment, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and was sentenced to pay a total of $1 billion in criminal penalties stemming from the company’s conduct in relation to sales of defective airbag inflators.

According to admissions made during the course of the guilty plea, from 2000 through and including 2015, DOJ officials said Takata carried out a scheme to defraud its customers and manufacturers by providing “false and manipulated” airbag inflator test data that made the performance of the company’s airbag inflators appear better than it actually was.

The Justice Department went on to say that even after the inflators began to experience repeated problems in the field — including ruptures causing injuries and deaths — Takata executives continued to withhold the true and accurate inflator test information and data from their customers. 

Meanwhile, the amount of recalled cars on the road has increased 34 percent since last year and one in four vehicles Americans drive has open recalls, according to research data that Carfax released last month.

Carfax estimates that there are more than 63 million recalled vehicles now in use across the country — and many throughout the Gulf Coast states, in particular.