Slow browser devs didn't stop this marginally better format from being added with CVEs such as this, but it does prevent significantly better formats from being added, so being slow isn't the way to go, the safety issues should be addressed with safety tools like memory safe languages and other wuffs instead of slowing down the progress
First, I would submit that possibly people have learned from this - WebP is 12 years old and both the level of craft and tools have improved since then. If you suggested Rust you would have been proposing far more of a gamble than now.
Second, I don’t think this is preventing better formats due to safety conservatism - AVIF is at roughly 83% and climbing – but it does support the argument that the Chrome team has too much unilateral control over the web. I don’t think their opposition to JPEG-XL is solely based on the support cost.
