That is not how Rust documents expect() should be used. Rust's own documentation (https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/result/) contains:

  let mut file = File::create("valuable_data.txt").unwrap();
  file.write_all(b"important message").expect("failed to write message");

The use of .expect("Could not read file") is consistent with Rust's documentation.

And I agree with OP that .expect() is poorly named. I wouldn't raise it as an issue on the work of others who just use Rust and are stuck with it though.