I read more closely the article linked in to Matt Peterson's name in my entry below, and I wanted to quote a piece of it... it's not specific to the cyclists, it's specific to the motor vehicle versus cyclist attitude that has seemed to come out of this incident:

In fact, studies show that bicycling is far safer than many think. According to a British report, the casualty rate for bicyclists is relatively small, about one death per 33 million kilometers of cycling. A Dutch study found that, setting aside highway travel, there are nearly twice as many motorists killed as bicyclists per mile traveled. According to a British Medical Association report, the health benefits of bicycling outweigh the risk of bicycling fatalities by 20-to-1. And people who bicycle to work have a 39% lower rate of mortality than those who do not, even after adjusting for other risk factors.

Is bicycling as safe as it should be? Not yet. As groups like ours work to improve bicycling conditions, the number of bicyclists in the Bay Area is growing steadily. That's good news for all of us because, in truth, not bicycling is far more dangerous than bicycling.