[jjnoakes]

It is possible, but the causes and frequencies are quite different.

In Rust runtime panics are certainly possible (array out of bounds, out of memory, etc), but the ones analogous to Java's NullPointerException have to be explicit opted into (unwrapping optionals) and do not happen implicitly.

Rust lets you handle optionals in nicer ways which lets you be sure you covered the "null" cases at compile time with no runtime panics possible, if you like.