I strongly agree with your point in general, memory safety is a major problem with C/C++ to an extent that is not found in other languages. Even worse, these often become problems long after they are written when the compiler gets "smarter" and does a trick with your code. Call it "code rot" or whatever you want, but it happens a lot more and a lot faster on C/C++ than other languages.

However, the nature of where C/C++ code is used does lend itself to severe problems. When you have a JVM vulnerability, you shouldn't be able to get any farther than a regular user with only sandbox privileges. When you have a kernel vulnerability, by definition you have the keys to the kingdom.

Of course there are always holes that can be used to escalate, but that also comes back to the problems of having a primarily C/C++ ecosystem...