The majority of reach trucks and forklifts come with lots of common security features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will normally have dead-man petals. Additionally, certain manufacturers are offering more features like speed controls which can reduce the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many articles available on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
A big part of lift truck selection is to make sure that you maintain access to high levels of support and service. Each and every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players in the lift truck industry. Even if they offer a nice price and a decent forklift design, if they do not provide the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you have to be prepared for significant aggravation when the forklift breaks. Each lift truck model goes down sooner or later and service, parts and general questions would probably have to be answered at some point.
Generally, you would want a local repair shop or dealer with a huge supply of parts for the particular model and make you are purchasing. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check 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 component you need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the models currently used in your vicinity. This is doubly important for specialty trucks such as turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you should assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Also, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model too.