Lots of safe languages are close enough to C speed, like Ocaml, Go, many JVM languages (w Graal native image if fast startup is needed like here), Ada, Swift, etc. You can still have kinds of memory bugs in all of these incl Rust, esp leaks.
I do think Go has have success in the same space because it is fast, but IMO the ergonomics in Rust for this problem space are a bit better. Of course, that's just my opinion.
> You can still have kinds of memory bugs in all of these incl Rust, esp leaks.
You're right. Leaks are not covered in the memory safety guarantees by Rust, neither are OOMs, but you can't deny you're on a way more safer space than with either C or C++.
For example Babashka is distributed like that (https://github.com/babashka/babashka/releases)