Most forklifts and lift trucks are available with a lot of common safety features, including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would usually have dead-man petals. Moreover, certain manufacturers are providing extra features like speed controls that could reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, 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 support and service is a hugely vital part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players in the forklift industry each and every year. Although they provide a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not provide the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you need to be prepared for major aggravation when the lift truck breaks. Each lift truck model goes down sooner or later and parts, service and general questions should be addressed at some point.
You will generally want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a full supply of the parts you need for your particular model. Be sure to visit the repair shop or the dealership and take a look at their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they store. Make sure to inquire 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.
Additionally, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific models are currently being used within your area. This is very vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being utilized in their service area that you should assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Moreover, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model as well.