I recently saw a Dutchman explaining that they don't wear helmets because they don't cross paths with cars. Bike lanes are designed to keep cars and bicycles apart. From the article it seems that cars always give precedence to bicycles.
Of course in many traffic situations, bikes really do have right of way. It wasn't always like that, though. In the 1980s, cars coming from the left on an equal intersection would have right of way over a bike coming from the right. Bikes were still explicitly "lesser" traffic. This was changed in the early 1990s I think, when bikes became truly equal to cars. These days the pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction, and some bikes bully cars around.
My point is that whether you cross your path with cars or not is irrelevant - you're still travelling anywhere between 15-30km/h and your head is 1.5-2m above the road - it's enough of a speed and enough of a distance to kill you just from a fall, vehicles notwithstanding.
There's just so much stuff going on around you when you're driving a car in an inner city in the Netherlands, that it's wise to drive very carefully. In contrast, bikes have their own lanes, can use both sight and sound more easily and don't have to be so afraid of bumping into pedestrians, this means they have a far better grasp of the situation and possible risks. This combined with higher agility means they can move confidently and adjusted as needed.