There were dozens of statistical deaths caused by all that increased particulate pollution. Air pollution is not harmless and it does reduce people's lifespans.

Statistical deaths from pollution are weird though, in that you are perfectly fine legally as long as you pollute within the accepted threshold. Driving 50 miles in a car that pollutes twice the allowed amount somehow makes you responsible for fractional statistical deaths in a way that driving 100 miles in a car that pollutes the allowed amount does not.

This observation does in no way absolve the polluters, but the big picture would be incomplete without this perspective. We all have some blood from statistical deaths in our hands, some people more than others, and again some of them more than others because they broke some rules we introduced to make the deaths not run or of bounds.

But VW was not polluting within the accepted threshold. They were very specifically defrauding regulators to try to get away with polluting far beyond the accepted threshold.

(Someone went to jail for VW and there was no death directly as a result of the emissions cheating.)

That was an instance of deliberate fraud.