Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-8484560-20130421050541/@comment-8484560-20130423014140

Note that the dragons also respect you as dragonborn so they are giving you a ride partly out of respect and parlty out of bending thier will, but also note that it is BEND will not control will Another thing might be that, after riding them a bit they regain part of their willpower back and conclude that if you are able to bend their will, they wouldn't attack you out of fear, at least partly. I do also know that the makers would likely do this to prevent players from cheating and discovering all locations. The thing that shocked me is that most of the activities are logical in Skyrim, but not being able to get a dragon to head to a vague landing point. A dragon wouldn't even fly to a giant mountain.