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.
“For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?”