There are actually a range of safety features which are common to certain kinds of trucks like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On most stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals also. Furthermore, certain manufacturers are providing more features such as speed controls which are able to reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are many articles available about Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
Making certain you will maintain access to high levels of support and service is a really vital part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players in the lift truck business each 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 ready for significant stress when the forklift breaks. Every lift truck model goes down sooner or later and service, parts and general questions must be addressed at some point.
You will normally want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a full supply of the components you require for your specific model. Be certain to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room so as to try to understand how many parts they store. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the part you need, where will it come from? With a bit of luck, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units presently utilized within your area. This is doubly vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks in use in their service area that you should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Moreover, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model too.