Yes, the same symptoms are still present.

I'd argue that it generally isn't an error in practice for applications, and thus the net effect of this exception is negative; it's extraordinarily rare for a crash to be preferable to running without localisation.  Adding a new function would help because I think it would be easier to persuade people to call a new function that just does what they want ("turn on localisation if possible") than to catch an exception (at which point they have to think "hm, could that exception be for some other reason than you-just-don't-have-that-locale", etc.).