It is well known that Barbas is annoyingly pushy, enough so that someone made a mod to stop it
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2686

However, other followers apparently do the same thing. Cicero is my current peeve, but after searching for the word
"pushy" I found someone saying one of the DB followers is also doing it. For that matter, my previous hireling Jenassa
would frequently ride my ass after passing into a new zone, then give me a "What?" as if *I* was the intruding party.

Is this a "personal space" physics problem, or did the game designers intentionally make these characters annoying?
And is this fixable in the console or with the NPC editor?

Dogs can be like this. They stick their wet noses right into your face and everywhere else when you let them.

Followers, including the humans, often seem to be running towards the player like a little child runs towards its mother or like a couple in love does. I wish they had made it so that the followers seek a spot beside you. However, they do not (or only some do?).

The main problem seems to be timing. It seems as if the function to detect the end point does not get called often and it lets followers run over their destination occasionally. It is worse with Barbas and he could have his endpoint too close to the player.

Maybe one of those "Follower Fix" mods takes care of it (... or it will if you only point it out to the author).

I'm pretty sure Barbas was intentional. Don't know about the others.

I mentioned elsewhere about the female DB initiate being, well, not so much pushy as "clingy". She kept running into me and "Huh?" became her watchword. Then there's Anska. I tried stealthing and she kept thrusting her, um, business into my face. So I stood up and she said, "keep you hands to yourself!"

I had a follower push me off of Bard Leap. That was not fun, at least I had save first.