In a recall similar to the massive Takata airbag recall, a number of bigwig automakers -- including Honda, Fiat Chrysler, Mercedes- Benz, and three other vehicle manufacturers -- will recall approximately 5 million vehicles worldwide, to fix a faulty airbag component supplied by German supplier Continental Automotive Systems.

In a Thursday disclosure, Continental Automotive Systems -- a unit of Germany-based Continental AG -- said that it had supplied potentially defective air bag control units to 5 million vehicles across the world. About the defect leading to the recall of 5 million vehicles, Continental said that airbags affected by the flaw may deploy inadvertently or fail to deploy at all, because of possible corrosion of semiconductors inside the unit.

According to a filing with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) made public on Thursday, the defective airbag components were manufactured by Continental over a five-year period, from 2006 to 2010.

The filing has also revealed that Continental has been aware of the defect in some units of the airbag component since January 2008, but had largely left the issue addressed all these years.

Meanwhile, with regard to manufacturers' increasingly common practice of delaying the disclosure and fix of auto safety defects, Byron Bloch -- an independent auto safety expert based in Potomac, Md. -- said in a recent statement that "the pattern is conceal, delay, deny;" and added that the mentioned "pattern" subsequently leads to recall of millions of vehicles, years later.