How is damage by pulling sideways usually addressed in connectors?
That problem is normally solved by not having clumsy users yank at the cable at the wrong angle.

Most users are clumsy or have clumsy children or clumsy pets, so it's not a very good solution to rely on an absolute clumsy-free environment for your connectors.

Before magsafe there was one solution to clumsy users and that was to beef up the connectors and the cables to the point where the user was the one damaged in stead of the connector.