Can you imagine if all the car manufacturers had to give people the purchase price of their cars back, goodbye auto industry worldwide. Cant see the courts enforcing it.
What VW did was fudge their emissions figures, a complete cover up, what has happened with Takata is a design fault, albeit a dangerous one but it is being treated like any other recall. Many other recalls, suspension failures, steering failures, engines catching fire etc are also possibly life threatening.
It is the magnitude of this recall which has people up in arms.