Yes, but we're still talking cars that measure metres by metres, and streets with lots of extra room. As you mention, the scene may have changed - so trying to preplan the whole route to the inch will only hurt you. What is needed is basic data above GPS, and I think the Street View lasers can be that.
I'm sorry I was unclear - I meant that the scene could have changed since the Street View team was last through.
The Google Maps data is surprisingly bad - we saw several presentations about the Car, and they highlighted how awful it really is.
I don't think that they're preplanning. I think that they're analyzing the scene for differences to simplify and speed calculation. Having good a priori data is really powerful.
