The National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) has called on automakers to make public their specific plans for replacing defective Takata airbags.

The federal road safety regulator believes that unveiling public plans via automakers websites, for example, will serve as an informational resource to communities and consumers to support effective recall implementation nationwide.

The agency's goal is to motivate affected automakers to accelerate their remedies for the defective airbags, said Heidi King, NHTSA's deputy administrator.

"To keep consumers safe in their cars and trucks, automakers should learn from their recall experiences to date and from one another, and innovate broadly and creatively when crafting plans to better engage with consumers and communities to replace every last defective air bag in their vehicles," King said.

The push comes on the heels of some twelve auto manufacturers including BMW AG, Ford Motor Company, and Honda Motor Company missing a Dec. 31, 2017 deadline to fix nearly 19.5 million defective bags, Bloomberg reported. Those bags were the ones regulators noted were most at risk of a ruptured inflator, a defect linked to over 20 deaths across the globe, notes the report.

Moreover, data on the NHTSA website indicates that approximately 6.2 million of those air bags remained unaccounted for and likely still installed in vehicles currently use as of early June.

The Takata air-bag recall is the largest and most complex vehicle recall in U.S. history, encompassing approximately 19 vehicle manufacturers, 37 million U.S. vehicles, and about 50 million air bags.

Related: How Fleets Should Approach Airbag Recalls