Again thank you very much !
Hand-building the lane-change would probably have worked better, didn't even think of that. But i think it would have taken more time. Currently the car is moved along as if pulled by an invisible rope. That is also what causes the fishtailing, when the car tries to realign with the lane its driving in.
Yeah i went with the immersion argument :) that is also why the canisters are so hard to see, which i agree might be the biggest flaw with my game. I really struggled to find a way to make them more visible without breaking the aesthetic.
The middle-ground you are talking about i had planned as a particle system that sped up with the car, simulating speed lines in a camera. Didn't have time for that either though - I couldn't get the acceleration and especially the deceleration to function as i intended and spend way to much time trying to fix that.
I had plans for road-turns and more car types, but had to scrap that too :P