You're correct- what I had meant to say is Rust is smarter with more runtime checks over C for several cases, like RefCell. Therefor, Rust can be slower than C because of safety (but not because of type checking itself).

RefCell has an internal semaphore. It's used specifically for multi threaded scenarios.

If someone is writing a multi threaded C app, they will likely be using semaphores as well. At least, they should be. Rust just enforces it.

So, I wouldn't say rust is "slower" in the regard.

Iirc RefCell is marked !Sync, I thought Mutex was the multithreadong analog?

That's correct.