Personally, I've never seen this bug. And I've played it for 30 years.
PS: That gameplay video you linked is mine. Thanks for the compliments man. Not a great score but it shows the tactics... I scored almost 400K on the AAE emulator but the ZD recorder didn't work with it.
The only things that regularly kill me are the type of missiles that turn sideways just before they hit you. They're rare... like 1 out of 10 missiles come that way... I never figured them out... if you can, you can score millions in the game in "legal" way as well.