Your experience with rural bike riding is very familiar. I've heard it before.

I would argue that there's no good answer to rural "mass transit". At least not currently. So if you live in a rural area, you're pretty much going to need a motor vehicle, likely a car, as a minimum to maintain mobility beyond your immediate neighbourhood.

In my rural community, we have a bank branch or two, a couple of pizza shops, one grocery store, and a handful of other stores including a dollar store, a few pharmacies, etc. Not a lot, but enough for the essentials. Anything beyond that for work or shopping, you're leaving the local town and driving at least 10-15 minutes through farmland to the next town over.

It's just impractical to live in this kind of place and not own a vehicle. Not if you need to work somewhere that isn't directly in town.

There's a hundred+ other places just like where I live, in my country and it's not changing. Not quickly at least.

Covering the massive distances with public/mass transit options just isn't feasible.

Inside any Metro, or any city with 100k+ people, yeah, it works, but out where I am with our relatively densely populated town (compared to the surrounding areas), having less than 10k people.... It doesn't work so well.

IDK. I do everything in my power to ensure the safety of cyclists when I see them, but it's rare to see any cyclists out this far.