Both, there's lots of both safety and pollution mandates like that. As just one recent example[1]:
> "the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it would require all automobiles sold in the United States built beginning in May 2018 to include backup cameras"
That's less than a year ago. It's a fair bet that most vehicles on the road don't have such systems, but they're now illegal to manufacture.
> 'The area directly behind vehicles has been described as a "killing zone" due to the associated carnage'
Got to love Wikipedia and their strict adherence to NPOV. That kind of camera does look to be a US (and Canada?)-only requirement at the moment.
Are there (m)any internationally-recognised compulsory safety feature standards that mean a vehicle manufactured, say, five years ago would no longer to be legal to manufacture today?
The "killing zone" isn't something Wikipedia invented, they're quoting Consumer Reports, which isn't exactly just some guy's blog when it comes to this topic.
You seem to just be moving the goal post. No, you are not going to find some safety feature of cars that was introduced in lockstep across the entire globe overnight whose impact is as dramatic as say seat belts or airbags were.
Car safety is all about marginal improvements at this point, and there are many regulatory agencies. In practice the US and EU set the tone for safety across the globe, but they don't act in lockstep.
Most of these mandates are also going to be relatively mundane, e.g. mandating that the A-pillar in newly sold cars this year must be 5% stronger than the previous mandate, or given statistics about pedestrian impact mandating some small adjustment to the design of the front bumper or hood.
Source?
Illegal to manufacture due to lacking significant safety features, or due to other changes over time such as evolving emissions standards?