Are you seriously putting the Linux kernel forward as a typical C code base? Isn't that a bit like selecting the example of an F1 car to show that cars are usually at least as fast as motor cycles?
Picking Chrome and Linux as examples is good for a couple of reasons. No one will complain that the codebases are small or were written by “bad” programmers who didn’t take enough care to write good code.
Because that’s the only thing holding back some languages right? If only the programmers using them would get good, use static analysis tools then bugs would be eliminated.
Feel free to provide evidence for other cross-comparable c & c++ codebases if you have.