““driverless” cars use GPS. How would this work out if all cars were “driverless” as some people would like to see?”
GPS is typically only used for vehicle tracking and route planning. Don’t confuse autonomous vehicle operation with the way your GPS based navigator works. In the case of a navigator, it is using GPS to tell you exactly where to turn.
Autonomous vehicles rely on sensor data mounted around the vehicle to drive much like you’d use your eyes and ears when driving w/o a navigator and told how to get somewhere in advance. GPS is only used in the route planning stages. GPS *could* be used to interrupt the planned route if things like congestion are detected. However, GPS would *never* be used to tell the car’s steering subsystem to make a turn for example.
Any engineer that uses any GPS data to control the vehicle with respect to actual driving needs removed from the project ... like yesterday ... that’s just flat out dangerous.
I am not a proponent of self driving cars any more than I am of having pilotless planes (I am a pilot, call me old school), but for over a decade now, differential GPS has been used for autonomous control of vehicles, specifically for example agricultural tractors where the DGPS allowed the tractor to plow perfect rows to within a centimeter. I cant speak to how much of an impact that has been on the farming industry, but just thought I'd make that comment.