Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx may compel Takata and the automakers with the supplier's faulty airbags in its recalled vehicles to speed up the replacement process.

Federal safety officials sent a strong signal today to Takata and the 11 automakers involved in the recall of the Japanese supplier’s faulty airbags that they want to problem taken care more quickly.

On Tuesday, NHTSA announced it was forcing Takata to declare the airbag inflators in 33.8 million vehicles in the U.S. defective and ordering a recall of the affected vehicles. Prior to that, there were 17 million vehicles with the faulty inflators subject to recalls by various automakers.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) followed that up today by filing a four-page document with the Federal Registrar that the outlines a legal process asking automakers to respond and provide input into how to prioritize the cars and trucks that will be recalled.

Despite asking for the plan, NHTSA is only required to consider it. The agency ultimately plans to oversee the recall process. It is part of the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation Act, or TREAD Act, which became law in 2000 in the wake of the recall of Ford Explorer SUVs.

The agency has some latitude when it comes to the process and if it “determines that a manufacturer’s remedy program is not likely to be capable of completion within a reasonable time, the secretary may require the manufacturer to ‘accelerate’ the remedy program if the (Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx) finds that there is a risk of serious injury or death if the remedy program is not accelerated and that acceleration of the remedy program can be reasonably achieved by expanding the sources of replacement parts, expanding the number of authorized repair facilities, or both.”

(Takata Readying to Issue Largest Auto Recall Ever. For more, Click Here.)

It’s unclear how NHTSA, Takata or the automakers will be able to accelerate the replacement of the faulty inflators. Takata has doubled its production capacity on the replacement kits and even enlisted the assistance of competitors to help.

Even with those efforts, it was expected to be at least two years to complete the repairs…when the number was at 17 million vehicles in the U.S. This marks the first time NHTSA is using this authority.

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The airbags overinflate and can explode, sending shrapnel into the vehicle’s cabin. The devices have been tied to six deaths and dozens of injuries. For months, Takata dragged its heels on issuing a recall on all the vehicles saying that the evidence implicating the inflators was unclear.

It changed its position on Tuesday acknowledging defects in more than 16 million driver-side and 17 million passenger-side airbag inflators in the U.S. However, it did take care to note that the inflators met the standards for the time.

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“The analysis to date suggests that the potential for this long-term phenomenon to occur was not within the scope of the testing specifications prescribed by the vehicle manufacturers for the validation and production of the subject inflators as original equipment,” the company said.