The majority of forklifts and lift trucks are available with many common safety features, such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would normally have dead-man petals. Additionally, certain manufacturers are offering more features such as speed controls which are able to decrease the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, there are many articles available on Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of support and service is a hugely vital part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the forklift business each and every year. Even if they provide a decent lift truck design and a nice price, if they do not provide the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you should be prepared for significant stress when the lift truck breaks. Each lift truck model goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions will probably have to be addressed at some point.
You will normally want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a complete supply of the parts you need for your particular model. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and take a look at their parts room in order to try to understand how many parts they store. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the component you require, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units currently used in your vicinity. This is doubly essential for specialty trucks such as turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks in use in their service area that you should assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Moreover, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that model too.