The original 1953 French film was called The Wages of Fear.
Sorcerer has the Tangerine Dream sound track, so there’s that.
Don’t recall rabies in either.
I’m thinking I have two movies intertwined. The other one was Rage (1966) which was about a dog biting a person in a town and trying to get that person to care. But all the write-ups never mention nitro. So I don’t know. Rage starred Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens.