its fine if you disagree and think that using "unsafe language" for low level hardware access is wrong but that doesn't change the fact that the more closer one operates to the hardware, the more bare-bone they need the tools to be or else they'll only get in the way of the job. Having to worry about something like a borrow checker or a reference counter just to manipulate a couple of bytes is not an efficient way to perform low level hardware programming.

Also, there is nothing wrong with any "unsafe language". Memory safety is a skill issue, not a language issue. All functional languages are safe and procedural languages are unsafe by nature. Its better to settle on a functional language and compromise on performance if memory safety is of utmost priority. The additional complexity and performance overhead of any supposedly safe procedural language is not worth it for doing low level stuff but it sure could be a fun choice when doing high level stuff.