How Safe Is Zig?

If one looks only at the comparison table from the article, one gets the impression that Zig is better than C only by implementing runtime checks. Runtime checks are a cheap trick on the road to safety. Dynamic languages do so all the time. That would mean there are no real language level advances when compared to C.

I would say Zig is much safer than the article leads on. That would be because of the impact of the design of the language itself. Zig has many language level improvements that reduce code fragility (a major source of bugs), lessen runtime code complexity, improve ergonomics and reinforce good design. Zig is definitely on the other side of the spectrum than C in that regard.

Zig has for example has a modern type system (incl. nullable types), namespaces, block expressions, structured error-handling, generics through compile time execution, and a defer statement.

C instead has things like the preprocessor, .h and .h combo's, a fragile build system and in general high quality duct tape engineering.