Some folks just have the ball and are running with it. The complexity of the language is growing even if you use C99. Just look at https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language it's quite a bit bigger with the new additions. The C additions are going beyond their original scope of 'only things major compilers have already implemented' as well.
What's needed is a "C historian" who documents all the attempts to rework or compete with C, and make an analysis and summary of the results and trade-offs. I doubt there's a free lunch (no trade-offs), but studying past attempts can tell what's been close.