A new study shows that race car drivers blink their eyes in the exact same “safe” places to maintain control and avoid crashes around high-risk maneuvers.

We studied three top-level racing drivers. Their eyeblinks and driving behavior were acquired during practice sessions. The results revealed that the drivers blinked at surprisingly similar positions on the courses. We identified three factors underlying the eyeblink patterns: the driver’s individual blink count, lap pace associated with how strictly they followed their pattern on each lap, and car acceleration associated with when/where to blink at a moment. These findings suggest that the eyeblink pattern reflected cognitive states during in-the-wild driving and experts appear to change such cognitive states continuously and dynamically.

Three drivers is a start. Would like to see this study done with hundreds of thousands of drivers using ADAS in Los Angeles.