Safe from coffee shop people or in a dorm, probably yes. If you lock your laptop with a good screensaver and have a decent PW, those people are not getting in anyway.
Plus with smart phones hardly anyone carries their laptop around these days.
But with what M/S is doing with Windows 11 "security" any ad company with $, lawyer with a warrant or alphabet soup agencies, can get a decent idea with what is going on even if they cannot get to see your data in Excel or Word.
But most M/S office data is now in the "cloud", so all bets are off for those files in many cases.
For the vast majority of users bitlocker just means that if someone steals your laptop or you leave it on a bus then short of a concerted effort by someone with technical ability, no one will have your photos or tax documents. It absolutely serves a meaningful purpose even if it has significant shortcomings.
Does the encryption keep the user's data safe if the device is lost or stolen? Yes? Then it fulfills its main purpose.