Alert latency matters because a forklift keeps moving while the system decides what it has seen. At a blind corner, a pedestrian and a truck can go from unseen to contact in moments, so every fraction of a second spent detecting, processing and signaling eats into the distance the operator has left to react and brake. A late alert can arrive after stopping is no longer possible. Latency comes from detection, from processing on the device or in the cloud, and from the warning or slowdown signal itself, so ask suppliers to state each part and measure end-to-end time in a pilot.
Systems that process detection on the truck or at a fixed edge device avoid a network round trip, which removes one source of delay and one point of failure if the network drops. Latency also interacts with zone size: a slower system needs a larger warning zone to give the same reaction time, and larger zones raise false alarms. Measure end-to-end time from a person entering the zone to the alert or speed change, at realistic travel speeds. Forklift brake safety and stopping distance and speed control systems explain the other half of the calculation.