Toyota announced a global recall of 6.4 million vehicles on Wednesday — a move that, on the heels of General Motors' recall of 6.3 million vehicles, added up to a public relations crisis for the auto industry.

Industry experts say more recalls are likely for a variety of reasons, including software-related glitches, modular manufacturing processes and, perhaps most of all, mounting fear among other automakers that they may be next.

Todd Turner, a consultant at Car Concepts in Thousand Oaks, Calif., says automakers like Toyota are being proactive to avoid a scandal similar to GM's. "When everyone sees the results of a recall that has been delayed, I think people go back through their processes and ask, 'Is this something we should address or we'll have egg on our face?'" he says.

In a different climate, Turner says, the issues Toyota addressed in its latest recall would have been handled with a Technical Service Bulletin, a more low-key communication that alerts car owners about potential issues with their vehicles.

"I think they're being overly cautious," Turner says of Toyota.

David Kiley, an analyst with New Roads Media, agrees. "The Toyota fine and GM recall has changed the paradigm for automakers. They have gone from a [point of view] of 'How can we avoid a recall?' to 'Let's just do a recall on this and fix it right, and fix it fast,'" Kiley says. "So, we are seeing companies look at their operations, repair data, accident data and processes anew, and so they are going to be calling more recalls. The cost of letting finance guys and lawyers talk the organizations into avoiding recalls if at all possible are over, at least for now."

The same could be said of others as well. In 2012, a year in which 45% more cars were recalled than sold in the U.S., 68.2% of recalls were initiated by automakers, rather than consumer complaints.

GM is another story. Turner thinks there will be more recall announcements to come. "There will be an ongoing slew of recalls from them," he says. "They went a very long period of time without any recalls. That's not typical of the business and not typical of GM’s history."

While the public climate may be prompting some proactive recalls, Roger Lanctot, associate director of Strategy Analytics, blames onboard software and algorithms related to airbag deployment. Lanctot points out that GM, Nissan, Toyota and Chrysler, among others, have instituted recalls related to the technology over the last two years.

"This is just the beginning of software recalls," Lanctot says. "In the past it was all about mechanical failures."

Another possible factor is the auto industry's use of modular components. As The Wall Street Journal points out, more and more carmakers are using more and more components across different models. While that saves costs, "if things do go wrong, auto makers can have a hard time containing them," the article notes.

Despite the recent wave of recalls, Turner doesn't think 2014 will break 2004's record of 30.8 million. He adds that there's nothing unusual about recalls, either. "They all do it," he says. "Even Mercedes has recalls."

That doesn't mean that cars are any less safe than in the past. The number of annual motor vehicle traffic fatalities fell 8% this past decade, versus the previous one, according to the NHTSA.

“While recalls are important, defects play a very small role in the overall highway safety picture,” Russ Rader, a rep for the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, says. “Recall numbers may go up or down, but vehicles in 2014 are much safer than vehicles 10 or 15 years ago."

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