If you look into your normal map you see that the texture itself includes this "bending". The segments in the normal map should look the same from top to bottom in your example scene. My guess would be that you might have baked the map without any phong- or edgebreaks - e.g. a model with smooth normals. Afterwards you…
Adding "moar geo" on low poly is another solution often cited. But yeah you can always predict this behavior if you understand how the rays are cast. check the linked sticky. The idea with the breaking of the center bit as suggested is so that the cage ONLY pushes out in the X&Y since the only adjoining faces are the ones…