There are a range of security features that are common to certain types of trucks including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On most stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals as well. Furthermore, some manufacturers are offering extra features like speed controls which could decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more information, there are numerous available articles on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
Making sure you would maintain access to high levels of service and support is a hugely essential part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players in the lift truck industry every year. Although they provide a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you should be ready for significant stress when the forklift goes down. Each lift truck model goes down at some point and parts, service and general questions will probably need to be addressed at some point.
You would normally want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a complete supply of the parts you need for your specific unit. Be certain to visit the dealership or the repair shop and take a look at their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they stock. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the part you need, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a local or regional distribution facility.
In addition, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific models are currently being used in your vicinity. This is very important 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. As well, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model too.