The golden rule with traffic, is don't trust just one sense, and dont expect people to respond how you would, i commonly walk through busy bus depots without any issues, mainly because i keep track of what is moving around me,
don't be afraid to take a double-take at something that caught the corner of your eye, and dont rely on other drivers to notice you and respond, i mean this all the way up to lane changes, you can only really focus on one thing at a time, and people struggle there way through this limitation by switching quickly between multiple roles, e.g. one that has caught me out in the past, your half way through changing lanes, which means your focus is almost entirely on the lane next to you, what happens when the car infront of you locks up there tyres in an emergency brake,
Back to the Op, you could cheat a little, record the orignal car reving up on a dynamo, pull it apart in the frequency domain and tie it into a combination of road speed and applied throttle,