I don't understand why the public marketing effort is so focused on safety, either, but it is. When I see Rust mentioned, e.g. here at HN, I cringe a little because odds are it's in the context of how unsafe everything else is, or there is at least some connection made to safety. "Obsession" seems loaded.

Rust is a very nice language with many useful and interesting features which may exist because of the developers' focus on safety but can very much be marketed without calling out safety all the time, and especially without the hints, suggestion, and innuendo that using a language without Rust's safety model is somehow dirty, dangerous, or worse irresponsible or unethical.