The industry/NTSB/FAA generally cares more about flight hours, but I agree with you. Both of these accidents happened shortly after takeoff. I am surprised that no accident has happened during landing.
I would imagine so. As long as the pilot wants to control the rudder, that same sensor would be used. What I would like to know is if the MAX has a different setup. I think it'd be idiotic of Boeing to use the same rudder control configuration as the old 737 considering the problems that they had as demonstrated by this post.