Dereferencing a null pointer is safe only on systems with an MMU to mark the 0 page as inaccessible so the processor can trap when it's accessed. On embedded sy

Dereferencing a null pointer is safe only on systems with an MMU to mark the 0 page as inaccessible so the processor can trap when it's accessed. On embedded systems with no MMU then 0 is a valid address just like any other. By making null pointer dereference unsafe the compiler doesn't have to insert null checks for every single pointer access to maintain the same behavior as a CPU with an MMU.