You're not alone, I heavily rely on vi mode and often struggle if I'm on someone else's machine and can't use it. I always wonder how you're supposed to work without it but I never dare to ask

it is an additional burden to switch to shell vi mode, it is not the standard. Maybe you can put it in all of yout bashrc files but you will probably hear some swearing from the people logging to your machines :).

Same - shell vi mode is critical for intensive terminal sessions.