I love milk!

Which is why a dragon will ignore you to go fight a mudcrab...or a butterfly. Because mudcrabs and butterflies pose more of a threat than a milk drinker such as yourself.

I hate it when that happens. And it just happened again the last time I played, yesterday evening.

I'm heading from Riften to Whiterun, then a Dragon appears and starts screaming. I'm jumping up and down doing everything I can to attract it's attention yelling please attack me! I could just continue along my way, but I'm thinking if the Dragon attacks the nearby village I'll feel responsible. So I just wait and wait and wait, and eventually it flies off.

So at this point I'm thinking did Bethesda have detailed design discussions on how to make the game frustrating and unfun with that Dragon behavior.

Maybe during the initial design of the game they where thinking, "How can be bring back Cliffracers but make them 1000 more annoying -- oh I know, dragons that keep appearing but won't even attack"

Every dragon in the game could start running away and it will never be as annoying as cliffracers...

Arrows are too slow to hit a flying dragon except by sheer luck. try a lightning bolt spell.

There's also dragons with their AI set to "Scout", who by nature won't attack.

My experience after just taking a break and watching some , is that they really like picking on everything aound you including your horse.Even on the rare occasion I've gotten their attention and they came in for a landing , I'll be beating the holy crap out of it and he'll be ignoring me and going full-tilt on the horse.Now when i see one being a nuisance , and that's what they are , I pull the map out and look for the nearest word wall marker.Ignore the dragon get on the horse and bee-line it for the word wall,If he doesn't show up you can try a couple of waits , but I've found your proximity to their beloved walls changes their disposition towards you.At the same time dragons can be a huge nuissance , it's also impressive AI if you look at it from the perspective these are ancient immortal creatures , they're not exactly stupid , and given the fact they have wings if it were me you'd be the very last thing in the world I'd wanna have a fight with.

Cliffracers, my god they were annoying...

I have this problem too. It made me end up getting dragonrend to FORCE them to attack me. It's mighty annoying when you're trying to get the "absorb 20 souls" achievement and they will running away

I found that if a dragon is attacking something else (at distance from me) the dragon will ignor me until I cause serrious damage to it. Either that or it go's after my horse and ignors the guy with the sword.