There are better alternatives than assembly. The Oberon approach would already benefit if low-level code no longer operates behind the compiler's back and instead supports full type checking. My new Micron language provides this.
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Sure, in theory we could do NEWP style, where everything needed for lowlevel is provided as intrisics, and Assembly isn't even available.
However this doesn't seem to be a solution that many are keen on going through.
How is Micro doing it?
There is actually no good reason why the SYSTEM features use LONGINT instead of typed pointers. C at least has type support, even if the compiler ignores it for many situations.
Micron is doing well; the language definition has matured; it now even supports Go interfaces from level 2 onwards (i.e. even for plain records before level 3 adds dynamic memory). The primary goal of Micron is not safety, but to make a better C, Pascal and Oberon, adding some features which turned out to be very useful in C++, but without the complexity. The compiler now has an x86 and ARMv7 backend with debug support. RV32 support is on the horizon. And there is a C99 transpiler if need be.