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The new leader had grand plans for change. The nation's top traffic safety cop would focus more on driver behavior and modern management than on gritty safety defect investigations and enforcement.

Softer mood lights were installed in the harshly lit conference room. Upbeat, motivational signs were posted in eyeshot of every employee. Even the agency's tough-sounding Enforcement division was renamed the less-threatening Safety Assurance division.

But at the same time, the agency -- under then-chief Ricardo Martinez -- was actually slashing the number of new investigations. That was going on in the mid-1990s when Firestone tire-related deaths and injuries were beginning to mount. Most of the angry finger- pointing and lawsuits have been directed toward Bridgestone/ Firestone and Ford Motor. But more recently, some are faulting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, the federal auto safety watchdog agency.

And Martinez finds himself at the center of a controversy that critics say swirled out of control when he ran NHTSA from August 1994 through October 1999. From 1996-98:

* NHTSA opened 45% fewer preliminary investigations than during the three years immediately before Martinez joined the agency, according to agency data supplied to USA TODAY.

* The number of in-depth engineering analyses dropped 40%.

* NHTSA took up to 26% longer to close probes.

Martinez says the agency focused on potential defects with the "highest likelihood that there was a true problem -- the ones where we could be successful" in achieving a recall.

Michael Brownlee, who headed NHTSA's Office of Defect Investigations from 1987 to 1991, says "You have to ask if casting a broader net wouldn't make it a more successful program."

Some contend that Martinez, a former emergency room doctor, applied a tourniquet to an agency that might have needed only some Band-Aids.

"Management and leadership come from more than the trendy management book of the day," says Brownlee, who retired from the agency in 1997. "It does an agency no good to have the hallway conversation dominated by mood lights and hallway posters."

What's more, critics say, Martinez's often quirky management style caused a rash of top administrative departures. When he was sworn in as NHTSA's chief, he was 39 and didn't have much management experience.

But, determined to leave his mark, Martinez instituted a series of updated management policies. Among them: "action passes" to encourage lower-level employees to make decisions on their own.

Martinez "reorganized (and) reinvented an agency that didn't necessarily need reinventing," says Brian O'Neill of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a longtime NHTSA observer. "There's absolutely no question that members of his staff have been demoralized over the years."

Slight of build but apple-cheeked, Martinez was known to grow even redder when he wasn't happy with what he heard from staff.

Fueled by numerous cups of coffee, the often-frenetic Martinez also was known to erupt at staff who disagreed with his new-style management. Rattled employees quickly nicknamed him "Ric-o-chet" because he seemed to be bouncing off the walls.

Result: an agency that critics say was often spinning its wheels even as the Firestone fiasco grew.

"Where there's smoke, they have to investigate because they don't know what's going to be there," says Diane Steed, who was President Reagan's NHTSA chief. "There might be fire."

Or, in this case, a firestorm.

During the Clinton administration, NHTSA had more overall recalls affecting more vehicles than ever before. Still, Martinez focused his efforts on two other key issues: drunken driving and seat-belt usage. The first NHTSA chief in a Democratic administration in 13 years, Martinez says those areas had mostly languished under the previous administrations.

One of his proudest achievements at NHTSA was a network of trauma centers -- funded by government and industry -- that share car-crash research.

"He did make the agency recognize we're dealing with humans, not just cars," says Jeffrey Augenstein, the Miami trauma surgeon who heads the network's William Lehman Injury Research Center.

But, critics say, more emphasis on defect investigations could have revealed problems with the Firestone tires much earlier.

For example, in July 1998, State Farm Insurance warned NHTSA about 21 Firestone incidents, including two deaths and 11 injuries. If a probe had been opened at that time, Firestone would have had to reveal at least 375 consumer complaints that court documents show it had received about its tires from 1990 through 1997.

That might have sped up the tire recall, mostly on Ford Explorers, that did not take place until August 2000. But top NHTSA officials say investigators shouldn't be faulted for failing to heed the early warnings about Firestone. The numbers were too small to raise eyebrows, says current NHTSA chief Sue Bailey.

"Nothing I've seen in what occurred tells me anything was handled incorrectly," says Bailey, who took over two weeks after the Aug. 9 recall. "People paid the right attention to 21 complaints over seven years."

Inquiries had been launched with far fewer complaints. In 1997, Chrysler minivans were recalled for a seat-belt problem resulting from an investigation launched after just two consumer complaints.

Rulemaking -- which focuses on ways to make vehicles safer -- also appears to have lagged under Martinez. Safety groups have criticized NHTSA for dragging its feet on rules, including those designed to prevent the type of rollovers that killed or injured nearly all of the victims in Ford Explorer/Firestone tire crashes.

A report by the Transportation Department's inspector general shows that in 1993, NHTSA issued 10 rules, spending an average of 2.8 years on each. In 1999, the agency issued four rules and took an average of 3.7 years to complete each, the report said.

But Martinez says that the air-bag issue, the subject of several rules, taxed the agency's resources. Also, several agency partnerships with automakers reduced the need for new rules.

Certainly, Martinez has his supporters.

"You know that (Martinez) cared when he spoke about safety issues," says Millie Webb, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. "Those weren't just words."

He has his detractors, too.

Steed says that Martinez may have tried to do too much too fast.

"Trying to change a very structured community to a more or less unstructured one is a very dangerous thing to try to do quickly," says Steed, now principal of Stratacomm public relations firm.

Martinez, who recently left his post as senior vice president at WebMD, says he is proud of what he accomplished at NHTSA. Besides helping to modernize the agency, he says, under his watch the use of seat belts rose while the number of fatal crashes -- including those involving alcohol -- fell nationally.

What's more, as a result of the Firestone case, Congress approved a law in October that gives NHTSA more power and more money. Although Martinez says the agency couldn't find a congressional sponsor for similar legislation last spring and once got about $175 when it asked for $60 million, he isn't bitter.

"It's just unfortunate," Martinez says. "It took something like Firestone for (the agency) to get the attention it deserves."