BMW today increased its recall count for an engine bolt problem to nearly 500,000 vehicles.

Are the cars on our highways getting more dangerous?  That might be a logical assumption considering the rapid rise in recalls over the last five years.  In 2013, a total of 22 million vehicles were involved in recalls in the U.S. alone, up about 20% from the previous year, according to federal data, and the pace is only accelerating.

Since the beginning of the year, General Motors alone has issued recall notices for approximately 6.3 million vehicles – about 40% of those due to faulty ignition switches linked to at least 31 crashes and 13 fatalities.  On Wednesday, Toyota announced it was recalling 6.4 million of its own vehicles – 6.7 million if you include products it also assembled for other manufacturers.

While not all of those Toyota products were sold in the States, preliminary data suggest about 11 million cars, trucks and crossovers have been covered by U.S. recalls during just the first 14 weeks of this year, roughly half as many as during all of 2013. And over the past year, it was hard to find a single maker not on the list, large or small, from mainstream brands like Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen, to that most exclusive of marques, Rolls-Royce.

“Everybody that has anything to recall is getting it out now.  This is a reporting frenzy,” said Dr. David Cole, director-emeritus of the Center for Auto Safety, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  “There’s so much attention to the issue of recalls in the wake of the GM situation, that if you have a problem you deal with it now.”

(GM places two engineers on paid leave as it expands investigation into ignition switch recall. Click Here for the latest.)

There’s little doubt that today’s cars are more complicated than ever, and there have been service actions for technologies that didn’t even exist a decade or so back, when recalls last hit their peak.  But for those worried that automotive quality is somehow on the decline, that is clearly not the case.  With minor exceptions, studies from such expert sources as J.D. Power and Associates and Consumer Reports magazine show today’s vehicles are generally better than ever – both in terms of initial defects and long-term reliability.

So, why the recall surge? For one thing, credit the auto industry’s growing focus on “economies of scale,” noted Joe Phillippi, chief analyst with AutoTrends Consulting.  The more copies of a water pump, windshield wiper motor or airbag module you produce the lower the piece cost. The flip side is that “if there’s a defect, you’re going to have one huge problem affecting a lot of models.”

In 2013, for example, several million vehicles sold by manufacturers ranging from Toyota to GM to BMW were covered by service actions due to their shared use of the same defective airbag system.

(Click Here for more on the latest Toyota recall.)

But there’s another factor at work.  And that’s the increased scrutiny the auto industry is facing – as are regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who some critics contend have been too soft on the industry.

The clamp-down began with the Ford Explorer/Firestone crisis that resulted in 100s of deaths due to rollover accidents at the beginning of the new Millennium.  Congress responded with the TREAD Act which beefed up scrutiny of vehicle problems and increased penalties on manufacturers who skirted the rules.

In late 2009 and early 2010, Toyota was hammered by a series of problems related to so-called unintended acceleration, recalling over 10 million vehicles in the process.  The maker was hauled before Congress and targeted in a criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that ended only last month with a settlement that will cost the Japanese maker $1.2 billion – and put it on probation for three years.

(BMW the latest maker to join the recall rush. Click Here for more.)

A key advisor to GM CEO Mary Barra confirmed that the maker is closely studying the Toyota case and expects to be under the microscope for at least several more years. But it isn’t alone.  A veteran Detroit auto industry official, speaking without official authorization, summed it up by noting, that the recall “system is working.  It’s providing the pressure and people know what will happen if they don’t respond.”

In many cases, that means that relatively minor issues that might have been ignored – or been subject of less aggressive “service bulletins” — in the past, are now triggering full-fledged recalls.

“Hiding a defect will eventually come back to haunt you,” observed Don Tanner, a reputation specialist with Detroit-based consulting firm TannerFriedman, certainly in today’s environment.

In years past, manufacturers often worried about how a recall might be perceived by the public. Various marketing experts agree that the damage is much less today because consumers see such service actions as a normal process that, if anything, is designed to keep them safe.  But the GM ignition switch fiasco shows there are exceptions.

“Recalls become a problem when the ethical issue becomes part of the story,” said Anthony Johndrow, a managing partner with New York’s Reputation Institute. And that’s become the problem for GM which, it now appears, delayed the recall for a decade, opting against an early callback because it would have cost more than the maker deemed justifiable.

A company will get in trouble if it relies on “Machiavellian decision making,” warned Johndrow, that “relies on a cost-benefit analysis against the cost of a human life.”

Curiously, many motorists seem to make similar decisions when delivered a recall notice.  According to NHTSA, an average of only 70% of vehicle owners typically take a car in for repairs, a figure that can fall to as little as 20% to 30% for minor issues.  Toyota aggressively pushed to boost the recall response rate for its 2009 and 2010 recalls, and GM is expected to do the same for the ignition switch issue, but despite the potential dangers, few expect it to get close to a 100% response rate.

(This story was first published on NBCNews.com.)