My understanding is that C++11 and eventually C++14 have plenty of modern language features. How does Rust compare?
So while C++ is certainly improving, Rust has a fundamental advantage in the safety department.
Less flippant answer; the usual arguments are that Rust is more memory safe, and hopefully less complex and with fewer gotchas compared to C++. It's still relatively complex - inherently, due to what it tries to do - but people seem to be of the opinion that it is much less complex than C++.