There are so many parts of C that are unsafe that a secondary tool is needed to have an reasonable type-checking and that tends to be devastating if they can be easily avoided by even safety critical engineers.
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_... "Toyota does not claim to have followed MISRA Guidelines"
And honestly I dont think we agree on what "a few" is. In my book if any more than 4 or 10 people die from a solved problem in computer science (like strong typing, mutexes, and range checking) that is already way too yes many
As far as decisions on a whim compare the two language design efforts and i'll let you decide:
http://www.adapower.com/index.php?Command=Class&ClassID=FAQ&... "The requirements were not a language specification, but instead they attempted to define rigorously the needed characteristics in a form that could be critically reviewed."
https://www.codingunit.com/the-history-of-the-c-language “It’s entirely Dennis Ritchie’s work”