It had been snowing all day and the road conditions were correspondingly difficult. It was still light when they set off on the 400-kilometre return journey, but increasingly heavy snowfall made driving more and more difficult. Snow clearing vehicles were deployed to enable further progress to be made. The three W.S. Tyler employees were driving on a two-lane main road when a snowplough on the opposite carriageway pushed the snow away so vigorously that a large load of snow landed in the middle of their lane. The driver of the car in front of them slammed on the brakes in shock. Unable to swerve out of the way, the W.S. Tyler sales representative consequently hit the back of the car. An American lorry coming from behind was also unable to take evasive action and pushed the parties involved in the accident into the ditch with a loud bang. The airbags had deployed and the car was demolished – a complete write-off. The W.S. Tyler employees freed themselves from the crashed car and were lucky – nothing else had happened to them. However, this incident prevented them from continuing their journey home, so they were put up in a hotel.
The evening then ended in one of the three rooms. The three accident victims made the best of the situation, ordered pizza and got themselves a bottle of wine, which they could only get open with the help of the door handle on the room door. The three of them lay on the bed and watched the thriller “The Departed” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson. Translated, the film is called "Die Abgefahrenen". The title could not have been more fitting.
In German, the film still has the subtitle "Departed - Unter Feinden". The three were not among enemies, but involuntarily on foreign territory.
