All these numbers are pretty meaningless to me, I honestly have no idea what the difference of .05 and .08 feels like. I know when I'm buzzed and I know when I'm drunk and I certainly know when I'm wasted, but how that correlates to the numbers is beyond me.
I'd really like to get a breathalizer at some point and test it out over a few hours to get a better understanding of it. In fact, maybe that should become part of the driver training curriculum. I could see going to a training class at an airport or somewhere similar, drinking X Alchohol over X Time and then driving thru a road course, or even a simulator, to test reaction times at different drunkenness levels. I know I've seen this done on TV but maybe everyone should get to do it.
This leads me to another aspect of this whole conversation. I've always believed that driving tests in the US are way too easy. Knowing how to parallel park and make a K-Turn is a joke in the grand scheme of driving. I think everyone should be subjected to a few different courses, maybe even over a few days.
I was really lucky that my dad and grandfather both took the time to teach me the skills i really needed for driving on the road. They would take me to this bus depot parking lot when it was raining and make me spin the car on purpose to get a grasp of what it was like to lose control of the vehicle, how to avoid it and how to recover from it. They also did this with 2 different cars in both the rain and the snow and I have to tell you, the first time you do it its scary as hell but after 4 or 5 times it becomes natural to just turn into the skid and recover from it. And when that skid happens in the real world, and it will, you won't panic, you'll just react.
Just think about what you learned in your driving class and what its really like on the road. Its a huge difference and unfortunately it takes time to build up the experience needed to actually be a good competent driver.
Can you imagine if we let people fly planes with the same amount of training?