The standard library doesn't give you a regular pointer, though (unless you specifically ask for that). It gives you an iterator, which is pointer-like, but exists precisely so that other behaviors can be layered. There's no reason why such an iterator can't do bounds checking etc, and, indeed, in most C++ implementations around, iterators do make such checks in debug builds.

The problem, rather, is that there's no implementation of checked iterators that's fast enough for release build. That's largely a culture issue in C++ land; it could totally be done.