Dereferencing a null pointer in C++ doesn't reliably crash, but dereferencing a null pointer in GCC and Clang C++ compiled with -fsanitize=null does reliably cr

Dereferencing a null pointer in C++ doesn't reliably crash, but dereferencing a null pointer in GCC and Clang C++ compiled with -fsanitize=null does reliably crash, with useful error messages, and it is documented to be so. You are not required to write standard C++. Making uses of implementation defined features is a valid engineering choice.