winkers

I'm tempted to sympathize ("gee, I never thought of that"), but on second thought, what's the difference between winking and blinking?   There are several, but the most obvious one, surely, is that winking is done with one eye and blinking with both?   By that measure, it seems to me that blinking is actually better description.

...Oh, wait, you're talking about turn signals.   Sorry, for the moment I was thinking of emergency lights, which is just the turn signals all going on and off at once.

Ok, how about this:   An older meaning of "blinkers" is the covers they put near a horse's eyes so that he can't see much to the side, only forward.   It's to keep him from being distracted, and especially spooked, by things going on around him.   Could the modern use of "blinker" be related to this?   The Online Etymology Dictionary doesn't say, only that the meaning "intermittent flashing light" dates from 1923.

In my ideolect blink is the unmarked, generic term for this action in l;ights, be there one, two, a string of 64 Christmas lights, or a jumbotron display of thousands of pixels. All of there lights blink. The only reason I see for saying that the turn signal winks rather, is because the pair of them sets up an analogy to human eyes. Wink would be poetic.

In human, to 'wink at' is to signal as a gesture of body language, e.g. show approval to a person, or flirt.
To 'blink' is done involuntarily, e.g. blink back tears, blink out of feeling weak.
That way wink might fit better for car signals.