Sorry for the double post...
Yeah, there really is a point where you have to wonder where the damn respect is. You're the guy who just killed the crap out of a literal army of dragons led by the immortal son of Akatosh, and some puny guard is demanding I pay a 40gp bounty because some idiot got in the way of my shout while I was saving them from a bear. I mean, at that point, going on a wild slaughter is really the only reasonable response.
Yeah, the Dragon Bounty quests are much more dangerous than you think at higher levels. Since you're going to an area where you're guaranteed to bump into a dragon, and then you have to worry about anything else that could randomly spawn there with you. A bunch of hostile Thalmor, a Dark Brotherhood Assassin, some Hired Thugs, or in my case, not one but two randomly spawning dragons. It can be pretty nasty if the random event generator doesn't like you.