Null is basically non-existent in idiomatic Scala. So technically you're right but besides calling Java libs there is only an infinitesimal small chance to get NPEs form Scala code. (Scala's NPE is the MatchException ;-)).

For Scala 3 there are improvements. It's "null safe" as long as you opt-in (modulo Java libs, and of course doing stupid things like casting a null to some other type).

https://docs.scala-lang.org/scala3/reference/other-new-featu...

Idiomatic scala yes, but while on boarding engineers hit many cases, where they ended up returning null in places they shouldn’t.

So you actually complaining about people who don't know what they're doing? How is this related to Scala?

When you have people without clue on the team no language will safe you. You can also crash Haskell programs by throwing exceptions or just using List.head…

I'd say safety implies safety from incompetent developers. Similar to the use of the word in memory safety.