A comparison which would be more accurate in my opinion is to look at driving in the 1960: Not much have built-in safety and no compulsory seat-belts (we see many issues with C/C++ projects, often very easy to fix). One can also even claim that no driver can safely control a car in all circumstances ("not even experts can use C safely"). Yet, with modern cars and regulations, driving is much safer today than it was and can be considered reasonably safe (modern C code and modern tooling). Rust proponents claim we must give up driving with cars completely because it too dangerous (all the accidents are clear evidence) and we must switch to trams as it is impossible to steer them into some objects (and even though there are also still accidents, trams have "steering safety" and rule out a whole class of driver errors).

You don't have to agree, but this is how I see it.