Japanese carmaker Mazda Motor Corp announced on Wednesday that a total of 315,000 Mazda3s and Mazda5s would be recalled in North America to fix the cars' faulty power-steering system, which the company said could heighten the possibility of crashes.

The company said that all Mazda3s and Mazda5s assembled and sold between 2007 and 2009 would be targeted by the recall notice, in which 215,000 cars are in the United States while 100,000 vehicles are all located in Mexico and Canada.

Mazda acknowledged that the problematic power-steering system installed in the cars could suffer from power loss, thereby stripping the driver control of the vehicle's steering wheel and pushing up the likelihood of accidents.

It added though that the company has yet to receive any incidence of crashes or injuries arising from the identified problem.

Mazda admitted that it has been dealing with the steering wheel issue for two years now as it noted that problem first cropped up in Japan and following series of investigations, the company reported in 2009 that the faulty steering system was induced by rust forming inside the high-pressure pipe of the system.

Company investigators had established that rust particles could eventually penetrate the system's pump and force a fail safe mode for the mechanism, then shutting down the system's operations in order to keep the whole system from overheating.

Initially, Mazda opted to issue a technical service bulleting when the problem was detected since 'occurrence rate was very low' then but by mid-2010 the company has concluded that "the occurrence rate was increasing in the North American market and then we began to study further field action for the market."

The carmaker said that the voluntary recall was decided to expedite the implementation of required field action to quickly address the issue as it added that affected car owners would receive notice within the next few months and dealers would be instructed to replace the defective power steering pump and two high-pressure lines for free.

Mazda gave assurance that the company is doing its earnest to ensure that car owners remain safe while driving their Mazda3s and Mazda5s, stressing that "our customers remain Mazda's highest priority."

US Transportation Department spokeswoman Olivia Alair said that the department is "reviewing the recall documents submitted by Mazda and will look at whether any additional action is necessary."