The reason is also pretty sad : "Pointers are easily misused, even by experienced programmers". I don't see how an experienced programmer has more chance to misuse pointers than anything else.
Some hardware (e.g. the smaller PICs) has poor support for pointers which can make indirection cost quite a lot of instructions.
Then there's the general principle of cutting your coat according to your cloth. You don't use a generalised pointer-to-rocket-engine system because you aren't going to add more engines at runtime
Well, we might. Particularly if the vehicle you're modeling for a hardware in the loop sim isn't entirely specified at compile time.
If there is anything that pointers must be used for, then they must be used. But it is hardly controversial to say that pointers are one of the least-well understood and frequently misused aspects of low-level programming.