Bikes are definitely far more dangerous than cars. Not as much as motorcycles, but that’s scant comfort.
If you look at the absolute number of deaths, biking is reasonably safe. As I said before, cities can do a lot to make it even safer, such as good bikelanes, better traffic lights for turns, better driver's education and so on.
I also disagree with looking at absolute numbers. Of course bikes look better there because compared to cars, very few people cycle in most places. Relative numbers are the only ones that make sense. Apart from this, I drive and cycle, and it seems obvious to me that cycling is considerably more dangerous. Everyone I know who cycles accepts that it's a case of when, not if, something goes wrong, and the consequences are obviously much worse on a bike.
At the same time, this is used by a lot of people as an excuse to not get a bike. In fact, it's not that dangerous as you make it out to be as is proven by statistics I guess (didn't look them up)