I can't say I agree with anything you say though... So only memory safety is C's problem? Not its type system that's very weak in every aspect (not just memory safety)? Not its missing module system? Not its ambiguous syntax?
You also confuse "simple" with "primitive" and perhaps "familiar". C surely is primitive, but how is it simple? Simple to use? No. Simple to implement? Not really. Has a simple mapping to the underlying hardware? That stopped being true three decades ago.