[Grammar] Tenses

[zardhsh]

Why in the following sentence, past continuous should be used instead of past perfect continuous?


"It's a good thing that they had been wearing their seatbelts, when the accident occured."

BTW, this is an excerpt from English Grammar Digest.

 

[teechar]

When a short past action interrupts (occurs somewhere in the middle of) a longer past action, you use the past simple for the short action and the past continuous for the longer one.

 

[emsr2d2]

Why, in the following sentence, ​is the past continuous [STRIKE]should be[/STRIKE] used instead of the past perfect continuous?


"It's a good thing that they [STRIKE]had been[/STRIKE] were wearing their seatbelts (no comma required here) when the accident occurred."

BTW, this is an excerpt from English Grammar Digest.

See above. I have made amendments to show you the correct construction for a question.

I have corrected the main sentence to make it grammatical.

For the past perfect to be correct, the sentence would have to be something like "They had been wearing their seatbelts for most of the journey but they undid them just before the accident happened".