I have serious doubts that anybody would actually create such a language. The basic problem with C is the ease in which you're allowed to shoot yourself in the foot or in other words the great pedantic lengths you have to go to in order to not do so.

A language that avoided it would have to be very close to C while making it only mildly more difficult to foot shoot. Everyone who is trying is overshooting and therefore not really writing an adequate replacement low level systems language. Even if they did, it would be so close to C that adoption pickup would be low, awkward, and the language would fail outright. (Think Python 3 but worse)

>But I bet they would criticize programs for being written in assembly, if they didn't need to be.

Certainly. If you're writing your web app in assembly you are very likely a crazy person unless your goal is to do something ridiculous. If you're writing some assembly in a critical path in a web server to precisely control the network stack, you might not be a crazy person (see Netflix tech blogs).