Tejas has NOT been flown enough to know about crash rates...
high maintenance means high maintenance and has nothing to so with pilots or jet/plan safety in short run, it has more to do with how the ground staff feels about it...
older plans were notoriously difficult to maintain with more experience manufacturers have learn to make jets more maintenance friendly...
Every plan is inducted in blocks...
For example typhoon trench 1 had no air to ground capability but later software validation have enabled it now, after 10+ years in tench1 block 5 upgrade got air to ground capabliity...
Thunder from get go had dumb bombs, sd 10 and vwr capabilities but precision strike, anti ship, anti radiation was added later in block 2 and backwards in block 1 when ASELAN pod was brought...
All of these validation requires years and usually added later in every aircraft be it f35 even..
read this article about f-35
why do you think no body knows what to do with trench 1 eurofighters
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/187754/f_35-program-office-responds-to-“concurrency-orphan”-report.html