Thank you so much for the feedback! This is super helpful and helps us identify some things that we will be working on for the next update! I definitely agree that the player sprite changes feel abrupt and detract from the gameplay, so we'll be working on a solution for this very soon. Also, a health system is in the works, and we definitely plan on incentivizing safe driving without getting hit by cars!
Thanks again for commenting, it's great to hear what players are thinking, and we will be using this feedback to improve the game!