Triggering the events to crash your opponents has been done before I believe in one of the NFS games. It's not exactly the same where you actively trigger an event with the press of a button, more that you triggered events by driving through them.
I don't like the limited ways in which you can acquire power-up. You basically start each race drafting so you get free power-up, and most of the races I've ran in the first 4 episodes don't have a lot of areas to drift to gain power. I also wish they had a turbo boost option for those places you could use a boost.