Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but it's frustrating as a pedestrian if you ever are walking along a road and have to take a walk of even only a few metres in a perpendicular direction to find a crossing, cross, and then walk back to the original road.
Regarding your second point, if you mean a car changing lanes from an inner lane to an outer lane, it does need to yield to everyone in that outer lane. This includes yielding to cyclists whose trajectory would intersect with the car. Again, the same applies to all traffic.