Most forklifts and lift trucks come with a lot of common safety features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will almost always have dead-man petals. Moreover, some manufacturers are offering more features such as speed controls which are able to decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more information, there are many available articles on Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of service and support is a hugely essential part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a range of new players in the forklift industry each and every year. Even though they provide a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you must be prepared for significant aggravation when the lift truck goes down. Each kind of lift truck goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions will probably need to be answered at some point.
You will generally want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a full supply of the components you require for your particular model. Be certain to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check their parts room in order to try to understand how many parts they stock. Make sure to inquire that if they do not have the component you need, where will it come from? With a bit of luck, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Additionally, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular models are presently being used within your vicinity. This is really vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. What's more, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model too.