Re #1 - If you are driving at places without bike lanes being able to move together with traffic flow is essential. Which then you can ask - do you also not expect motorcyclist to be on road either?
Motorbikes are certainly louder which IMO why we should ban motorbikes altogether. I hate visceral hate to them.
Your best bet is to have all your clothing match your bike, Power Rangers style, to increase your chances. And lots and lots of very bright lights. One little handlebar mounted light is going to look like a reflection or a flashlight.
I only road residential roads and bike paths, planned my route carefully to avoid highways. Key things are to take the lane if you can do the speed limit and only give it up if safe to do so. Avoid driving close to parked cars that will open their door and kill you. Watch left turns in front of you.
The thing with riding that on a bike path was that I had no concerns slowing down amongst pedestrians or on blind corners as it was no effort to get back up to speed. I was less inclined on my road bike due to the effort. Road bikes can get up to that speed, had a few that came close to pacing me. I understand the sentiment but I had zero incidents in four years of commuting. I was courteous, used a bell. Half my ride was up hill on the path and it did 30km/hr there. Everyone went pretty fast down of course.
I'll admit, I did enjoy passing spandex on expensive bikes with my beater bike wearing jeans. This was a decade ago when ebikes were not at all a thing.
Many bike paths seem to discourage slowing down for junctions by putting them in dips - the opposite of how some train stations are on a hump as "gravitational regenerative braking".