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Taylorsville • Jason Davis was doing just fine as he drove through a tight, curvy mock construction zone course at 25 mph. Then his cellphone rang and, as he picked it up, he hit an orange cone marking the path.

"I was in such a panic I actually hung up instead of answering the phone," said Davis, director of operations for the Utah Department of Transportation. Had he looked down to answer the phone properly, "I probably would have went straight through" the curve he was approaching.

UDOT set up a path marked by orange cones in the parking lot of its headquarters on Thursday to demonstrate the dangers of distracted driving — especially in construction zones, which the course simulated.

Driver after driver hit cones when answering or talking on their phones, "and they are only doing 25 mph or less," Davis said.

"Many Utahns think they are good at handling distractions while driving, when in reality they are just lucky," he said. "Don't wait for a crash to learn driving distracted is deadly."

Since 2006, "Over 25,000 accidents have happened in our work zones in Utah," Davis said. "We've had 11,000 work-zone injuries. That is just the motorists and not the workers…. We've had over 100 work zone fatalities." Four UDOT contractors also have been killed in work zones in that time.

"Those numbers surprised me in all honesty," Davis said. And he said many of those accidents came from drivers distracted "by talking on the phone, eating and texting."

Jeff Reynolds, a UDOT incident management team supervisor, earlier this month became one of those injury statistics. His truck — with flashing lights and electronic sign working near an accident on Interstate 80 in Parleys Canyon — was rear-ended by a car doing 76 mph. The other driver was taken away in critical condition.

Reynolds, who escaped "with just a bit of whiplash," said, "These accidents happen in split seconds. In one second, you travel 100 feet. That's a long way to travel with your eyes off the road. So it doesn't take very much to run into someone."

Reynolds tried to drive his large incident management truck through the mock construction zone. "I took down a few cones" even without being distracted. "They kicked me off because I was taking down half the course" even while doing only 25 mph because of trouble taking his big truck through tight curves.

He said that shows how dangerous construction zones are. "We're trained, and I still had a hard time," he said. "With big trucks you don't have a lot of time to make adjustments."

Davis said UDOT will have "more than 180 construction projects going this summer. So there's a lot of opportunity for people to be distracted and cause an accident."

Davis said UDOT's theme for the construction season is "Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel."

The event on Thursday was part of National Work Zone Safety Awareness Week.