[upofadown]

Shouldn't it be possible to let people do their own blurring for the case where the automatic stuff doesn't work?

There isn't going to be that much to blur if this is all straight ahead views from a car. You don't see many people on the road from lower than car roof level. Those on the sidewalks will be pretty far away. The issue with Google is that the point of view is deliberately made high enough to clear cars in other lanes. So in practice the privacy thing might not a huge issue here unless a significant number of people start mounting cameras on poles.