So the new update came for Midnight Club Los Angeles that addresses the overwhelming difficulty in the game.  I played a good chunk last night and found it to be interesting.

So what they have basically done (or as it appears to me) is to make the Easy and Medium races less frustrating.  For these two specifically it seems easier to catch up to the AI if you wipe out and when you pass them.  If you dive flawlessly, you get get a good distance from them; however, if you do mess up and "wipe out" they can still fly past you because the game still has that rubber band AI thing where they catch back up to you.  For all difficulties they seem to have made it so that the opponents run into cars more which makes them more likely to "wipe out" themselves - this is where it gets kinda weird.  First thing, sometimes they just ram into cars and keep on going, and these "flying" cars sometime make you crash, and then makes it near impossible to catch back up on the Hard (Orange) and Hardest (Red) races.  Also, it seems that the only opponent prone to "wipe out" is the car closest to your position; so if you were in 4th, the only car that will "wipe out" is the one in 3rd.  This really doesn't make sense cus even if you pass that guy the guy in first is still driving flawlessly and it is always frustrating to catch up to that guy.
 
So all in all it is a smart update that makes the game more approachable; the Easy and Medium races are pretty easy now and can be beaten without much frustration.  You still miss those turns and screw up the whole race and whatnot, but that is Midnight Club.  It's a great game and now because of this update, the only frustrating races are the Hard and Hardest races, which, I guess is how it should be... but maybe not to that extent.