South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long, who started the experiment, noted that many people arrested for DUI are alcoholics who do it again and again, even after their licenses have been taken away. So the way to attack the problem, he said, is not to prevent them from getting behind the wheel but to stop them from drinking.
"If they quit drinking, I don't care if they drive," he said.
Authorities have no figures that could show whether the program in 14 of South Dakota's 66 counties has saved lives or reduced drunken driving arrests or crashes. But it appears to be keeping people sober.
More than 1,000 chronic offenders -- people who had been arrested at least twice for drunken driving -- were put into the program, and they passed more than 99 percent of the 166,000 breath tests at sheriffs' offices, Long said.
South Dakota has one of the nation's highest alcohol-related highway fatality rates. Twenty-six percent of drivers in deadly crashes in 2005 were drinking, according to the latest figures available.
People checking in twice daily with sheriffs pay $2 a day for the alcohol testing. Most of them are in the program for about four months.
A bill to provide $345,000 in state money to help take the program statewide cleared the Legislature without a single negative vote, either on the floor or in committee. Republican Governor Mike Rounds plans to sign it within days.
