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Here's a tribute by Anna Blackmore, daughter of maverick Frank Blackmore OBE (the innovative, outspoken and determined Traffic Engineer responsible for introducing the use of right-hand priority and who invented the mini roundabout and the multiple 'Magic Roundabouts'):

Frank was born and brought up in Fort National, Algeria, of a Swiss/French mother and a British missionary father who may have helped instil in him the life long-habit of putting others first (even enduring during dementia).

From an early age, Frank delighted his mother by inventing little devices to solve practical problems (such as a fly-trap built of matchsticks). He studied engineering in Lausanne, Switzerland and came to work in Britain in 1936. He was bilingual and held dual nationality until obliged to give up his French passport during the WW2 German occupation of France. 

A famous family story records his dramatic dash during his final exams, persuading a pilot to fly him from Croydon to Essex for an interview in Colchester, getting an engineering job, then flying back to Croydon and thence Lausanne to finish them!

In the war he joined the RAF and, as a pilot of Wellington Bombers, was closely involved in the early successful testing of the Leigh Light. This was used at night to spot and destroy the German U-boats which were attacking the allied convoys across the Atlantic ocean.

Another family story is of a wartime forced landing on the beach at Ardnamurchan Point, west Scotland (where there was nothing but a telephone box), and how they had to be rescued by sea. He was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1944.

He remained in the RAF until 1959, working for the Air Ministry in London and then for a time for NATO in France, and finally as Air Attaché and interpreter at the embassy in Beirut, where he recorded conversations (via holes drilled in the wall) of Russian embassy staff next door.

In 1960 he joined the Road Research Laboratory (RRL) and became interested in junction design, being keen to improve traffic flow to clear bottlenecks, and hence reduce accidents. Out of this passion was born the mini-roundabout.

Revolutionary at that time, theseare now commonplace in the UK and other countries. Initially he worked in his own time as his ideas were too radical to be taken seriously. It was a long hard battle and it wasn't until he got his suggestion accepted to introduce right hand priority at junctions that he began to gain credibility.

The inspiration came in France where he saw right hand priority, in a right hand drive system, causing ever increasing congestion at major intersections. (He once climbed the Arc de Triomphe, to observe traffic below).

The first mini-roundabout* was laid in Peterborough in October 1968. His passion became an obsession and family holidays regularly featured stops at junctions while he took photos from all vantage points. His devised system of photography comprised a camera lens on a crane above the junction, pointing upwards at a concave mirror.

Frank's main idea was that the mini roundabout should be just a guide to make clear to users which driver always had priority, and how to pass each other if each turning right from opposite directions. Thus he simplified it to a mere white circle painted in the middle, which one could just drive over if alone.

He also used them to aid flow at large junctions, creating the multiple roundabout. Two of his projects are the so-called Magic Roundabouts in Swindon and Hemel Hempstead (which are admired/disliked equally).