The context was load average, not CPU usage percentage. The load of 1 means (more or less, I'm simplifying) "all the time there one task ready to be run, so no other task is starved". In most systems/situations you'd see load <1. But there are specific cases where it would be silly high. For example I've seen >400 on a VoIP conference server.

It's more of a "pressure" / "need" measurement. And yeah, applying that to per-process CPU measurement would be interesting.