I know this has been discussed before and different people have different perspectives, but I think what is a safety can be within reason relative to the individual’s circumstances and not universal. While a school with a 25% acceptance rate is a safety for no one, there are schools more selective than 80% that are a safety for strong applicants, even where they don’t have an auto-admit structure.
For example, our state’s flagship has a 56% acceptance rate – well below your 80% threshold. But we have data on the results for over 2,000 applicants specific to our school in Naviance. The cluster of green checks in the higher quadrant of scattergram is so thick that it appears as a solid green blob, with not a single red x in the region. If your stats are high enough, it would literally be unprecedented to not get accepted. With no history of yield management, that’s pretty safe for some applicants.