I don't believe it is exaggerated. Air travel is about 10X safer per mile. If you are not a high risk driver, that will narrow, but it's still true.

Comparing total casualties is very deceptive, since cars rack up many more passenger miles than airliners. Still, cars kill lots of people and car safety is a high-value goal.

Once we get self-driving cars that are significantly better at avoiding accidents and mitigating severity of accidents, this all will change in very significant ways. It will certainly result in many more people avoiding the TSA.