I don't think that casting a range of bits as some other arbitrary type "is a bug nobody sees coming".
C++ compilers also warn you that this is likely an issue and will fail to compile if configured to do so. But it will let you do it if you really want to.
That's why I love C++
I work on one of the larger c++ projects out there (20 to 50 million lines range) and though I don't see the full build logs I've yet to see a component that has a warning.