Well if you read the article, you'd see that's exactly what the author did -- he looked at the death rate compared to trips / miles traveled. Based on trips, bicycling had 14 deaths per 100 million trips, compared to 10 for driving. Based on distance, bicycling had 3 deaths per 100 million km, compared to 1 for cars.

So I guess you could say that cycling is 3 times as dangerous as driving, until you factor in the distance: around 60 million miles.

I'd bet that once you factored in the miles per trip, cycling would be about the same as driving, since the average car trip is around 60 to 80 miles (my guesstimate), while the average bike ride is probably around 20 miles or less.

Also, keep in mind that the automobile deaths basically consist of 100% licensed drivers, while the cyclist deaths include mountain bikers, and tons of people who don't have the foggiest notion of how to ride a bike, i.e. people who salmon, ride on sidewalks all the time, etc.

Finally, as the author points out, the stats don't include health offsets from the activity: in the case of driving, these are all negative; in the case of cycling, they are almost all positive.

Bottom line to me: cycling is safer than driving, and much better for you!