If some architecture traps on unaligned access, then the compiler can and should simply generate the correct code so that it loads the integer piece by piece instead. Load multiple integers and shift and mask away the irrelevant bits, done. This is exactly what modern architectures already do in hardware. Works, it's just a little slower.

This is exactly what the compilers do if you use a packed structure to access unaligned data. Works everywhere, as expected. Compilers have always known what to do, they just weren't doing it. C standard says no.

The fact is the standard is garbage and the first thing every C programmer should learn is that they can and should ignore it. There is never any reason to wonder what the standard is supposed to do. The only thing that matters is what compilers actually do.

That's why we write C instead of assembly, isn't it?

You could also mandate that a compiler for architectures without unaligned access either has to prove that the access is going to be aligned or insert a wrapper to turn the unaligned access into two aligned ones.

Just pretending the issue doesn't exist at all and making it the programmer's problem by leaving it as UB in the spec is a choice.