File locking is still a thing.

The blinking light does precisely what it advertises. That's never really been the issue.

Damage certainly is unlikely if the thing is pulled while mounted. I wouldn't design the UI around that, though.

An unplugged drive doesn't need locks, and if a program puts a file into an inconsistent state and leaves it there because it has a lock? Have they ever heard of crashing or power outages?

You want "them" to use files more safely so that you can implement a less safe means of mounting and unmounting devices? I'm grateful Microsoft (and others) do not think that way.

If a program crashes when idle I don't want corrupt data. If I leave a program open in the background and I lose power or my video card driver takes down the system I don't want corrupt data.

I can somewhat excuse losing data if things go wrong during a save. At any other time it should be robust enough that my data is safe.

This is not just about unplugging drives, this is a general sanity measure.