I don’t think Safari should be considered a hindrance, although it sure does its best to be one.
I say that given Chrome supported WebP over 5 years ago coupled with its massive dominance of usage percentage. Generally when something comes out from behind the dev flag in Chrome and goes live with a fallback* present then usage commences by most. If a fallback* is present there is no reason not to take advantage of features that are supported in Chrome and benefit the majority of users given its marketshare.