Most reach trucks and forklifts 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, some manufacturers are offering more features like for example speed controls which can decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many articles available about 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 really important part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a range of new players in the forklift business each and every year. Even though they offer a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not provide the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you must be prepared for significant stress when the forklift goes down. Every model of lift truck goes down sooner or later and parts, service and general questions will probably have to be addressed at some point.
Normally, you would want a local repair shop or dealer with a huge supply of components for the particular make and model 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 certain to ask that if they do not have the component you require, where would it come from? With a bit of luck, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units presently used within your area. This is doubly essential 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 may not be stocking many if any parts for them. In addition, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.