Dr. Sathyanarayan Rao is a research scientist based in Bengaluru, India.

After spending several years working and living abroad, he returned to India and began navigating the city’s traffic system as a daily motorcycle rider. Before leaving India earlier in his career, his commuting experience had largely been limited to public transportation. The transition to riding in one of the world’s most congested urban traffic environments revealed a striking difference between rule-based traffic systems and the highly adaptive, improvisational dynamics found in dense Indian cities.

With a background in scientific research, he approached the daily commute as an observational exercise in human behavior, cognitive decision-making, and complex systems under stress. Over time, patterns began to emerge-recurring behaviors, predictable mistakes, and the psychological dynamics that shape traffic interactions.
This book grew out of those observations.

When not navigating traffic or writing about it, the author works in scientific research and continues to study complex systems-both in laboratories and on city roads.