Are you assuming I didn't already do that? For your information I've written an entire cryptographic library in C https://monocypher.org and routinely chose C over C++. My claim that C is broken beyond repair doesn't come from ignorance or hype, it comes from over 15 years of first hand experience.

And of course, GC and RC aren't fixes, they can't apply in the performance constrained settings C and C++ typically are used for (tiny embedded chips, video games, video encoding…).

Also there's no way I'll even look at a new language without some form of generics. They're just too damn useful. Sure we could try the Go approach and special case generics for a few core data structures, but I believe a general purpose language needs a way to add custom ones. Heck, even Go fixed its mistakes and added generics after all.