I can tell you exactly how you can game it. Get altitude and find someone to pick. Dive on them and if they pull up to HO, keep diving straight for them building as much spped as you can. Pull up at the VERY last instant before you see a collision. You won's see a collision, EVER. But the one who pulled up will see a collision everytime. Perhaps this is similar to what happened to me. Execpt I wasn't trying to pull around for a HO, I was trying to dodge their bullet stream.
Okay Chaser... I'll make a deal with ya.. My ingame name is AKmeathd. Find me when I'm on, and I will go to the DA with you, and you can try all you want to get me to take collision damage, and you not. I think it would be almost impossible to do consistently as it's impossible to predict what your opponent sees on his front end (where the decision of damage is made). You may get lucky once or twice, but it won't be with any consistency.
I honestly can't remember the last time I took damage from a collision. I have figured out how to avoid hitting things, to keep that from happening. If they changed the collision model so that I took damage from a collision that didn't happen as far as I'm concerned, I would be angry, but I would adapt, and leave a larger margin.
You see, I realized this was a game, that took place on via the internet, and realize that "some" concessions would have to be made for playability. I feel the "if I don't hit it, I don't take damage" model is fine.