Just because this alternative language would have avoided this bug does not mean a much worse but would not have been created with a higher level language or even ATS.
Well, people can write bad/unsafe code in any language. But ATS can remove entire classes of bugs from a program, while C is notorious for its lack of safety. Though obviously, it has no more built-in protection from side-channel attacks than C.
Basically the cut down to everything is the laziness of how it is developed and how many people are actually looking over the entire code. ATS allows the developers to know that the can be even more lackadaisical about coding as ATS will remove bugs for them...
"There are collisions because people don't pay enough attention. Imagine if we installed a collision detection system, people would pay even less attention!"