Neither the name or logo of famous car brands got associated or tarnished by tens of thousands killed every year...
Even when some of them ocassionally made a specific "death trap" model or production run, that's simply not how people thinks of them.
It's all about timing and the brand.
Apple coming into the car market will have the same media scrutiny as Tesla. There might be 1000s of Toyota motor vehicle accidents weekly, but if there's one involving a Tesla and particularly one driving autonomously, you can bet it will be on the front page.
It's an enormous PR challenge for Apple if one of their cars kills someone, especially in any autonomous mode. They likely won't be about to stop that from happening completely but either way it's still a challenge they will need to deal with.
Finally, Apple historically have not been associated with building high speed vehicles that can kill people. That is an inherent risk if you are entering the market as purely a car maker.
Working in software I didn't sign up for something that people will put their lives in the hands of (awkward wording, but you know what I mean).
It really depends. I think it happens more frequently than you thought. From life supporting software and automated planes which are obvious, to suicides caused by buggy software (see the British post bug) but also all the harm that social algorithms or private data leak can do.
In fact, there is a lot of things that can go very wrong with most software systems.
I don't think that awareness is built in to every consumer brand.
Tesla I think is a good example of this -- some have a bad image of Tesla, which is probably in part to their propensity to attract media attention and public hype. When someone puts a Ford Escape on cruise control and crashes, nobody hears about it. If Apple released a car, it would have a ridiculous amount of hype, and ever darn scratch someone put on one would be front page news.