Why does strncpy not null terminate?

strncpy() supposedly protects from buffer overflows. But if it prevents an overflow without null terminating, in all likelihood a subsequent string operation is going to overflow. So to protect against this I find myself doing:

strncpy( dest, src, LEN );
dest[LEN - 1] = '\0';

man strncpy gives:

The strncpy() function is similar, except that not more than n bytes of src are copied. Thus, if there is no null byte among the first n bytes of src, the result will not be null-terminated.

Without null terminating something seemingly innocent like:

   printf( "FOO: %s\n", dest );

...could crash.

Are there better, safer alternatives to strncpy()?