First published through The Paris News on July 3, 2017. The article can be found on their website at http://theparisnews.com/opinion/article_c05a50fe-600b-11e7-a75f-939d85e29ed9.html

I bought a remote controlled drone a few months back, and had to replace it within just a couple of weeks.

The drone originally worked how the manufacturer said. However, one night when flying it, I thought it was a good idea to fly under the Eiffel Tower near Love Civic center.

As I said, I only had the thing for about two weeks and thought I was skilled enough to maneuver it through a small area.

I was hanging out with a friend that night and we decided to fly the drone around the Civic center, since it has such a large parking lot, it would give us ample amount of space to fly, without too many obstacles.

After awhile, a friend suggested I try to fly under the Eiffel Tower. Of course, with flying the thing in open air, no obstacles, no need to be cautious, I figured I’d give it a shot.

Looking only through the camera, I made my way to the tower. With the lights flowing through it’s patterns, I could see just enough. But, when I inside the bottom of the tower, the lights turned completely off-resetting the pattern.

With no lights, the drone collided with one of the sturdy and strong medal beams. Straight to the ground, the drone slammed into the concrete below — surprisingly unharmed

After inspecting everything, there was just minor, cosmetic damages done. I then placed the drone about a foot in the tower and began to take off. To this day, I still believe it was because I was standing under the medal tower, disorienting the connection to the drone.

Slowly pushing the throttle to go up, the drone insisted to not go slow, but sped straight up into yet another piece of the tower. Slamming it even harder into the concrete, this time breaking the cameras gimbal.

Obviously I was upset, but there was nothing I could do, but wait until I could get it replaced.

Just in case I did something as dumb as that, I made sure to insure the replacement.

Now, just imagine having a drone with wheels, that you can fly or drive to work. I would be too scared to drive this one, because I’d probably do something just as equally dumb, but in a car-like drone.

Singularityhub.com Edd Gent said engineers speculate we’ve looked toward flying cars all wrong. He said we should help drones drive by adding wheels to the drone, instead of wings to a car.

“The result is a vehicle that combines the speed and mobility of flying with the energy-efficiency of driving,” said Gent.

This will supposedly reduce on CO2 emissions. Which, whether for or against a global warming concept, could help with the depletion of fossil fuels.

Not only did they discuss helping drones drive, they think it’ll be a good idea to make them unmanned. In other words, you wouldn’t drive or fly it, it would drive itself.

It’ll still be quite some time before I accidentally break a personal, drivable drone.