"Driving at 70 MPH versus biking at 12 MPH is a ludicrous point of comparison. If you're traveling at 70 MPH, you're almost certainly driving somewhere that you couldn't realistically bike. Driving 4 hours to a family gathering is reasonable in a way that biking 20 hours on the highway is not. ... The risk numbers are only appealing because of this absurd conflation."

I am not sure that I disagree with you overall, but I believe you are too dismissive here. Obviously, implicit in the piece is the notion that you must arrange your life to a degree to make bicycling possible, as the car is vastly more flexible. I think the better question is, having done so, how to compare the risk? It's not an easy question. MMM's answer is admittedly somewhat glib, but you're not allowing room for a fair comparison either.