Would these be a good or bad thing?

An interesting follow-up: yesterday Paul Raats (a pro cycling photog) posted a picture of his new remote controlled copter that he uses for this stuff

https://twitter.com/#!/PaulRaats/statuses/68975229325672448
http://twitpic.com/4wyy95

And here's a shot he made of the Amstel Gold race with his previous copter
http://twitpic.com/4mvyzc

It does look quite cool, if it can follow the TDF on its on without having to use a remote, then its a good idea, but if you have to sit there watching a screen using a remote, i dont see the point of that, its just like a rider on the back of a motorbike with a camera

What i'd love to see is some sort of helmet cam on some riders in the peloton, but i dont know how practical that is for live video?

Its a ridiculous design - tons of extra material on the things that needs lifted into the air, and it looks like it'd be unstable in flight too.

What's more, things like this already exist, with more practical designs.
http://www.youtube.com/v/SIlWvlGxy3c&ampfs=1

The Aeryon Scout (intended for law enforcement) has a 20km range and can fly at up to 40 km/h, hover, transmit live video. It can also fly a pre-designated path via GPS - useful for following a race.

This isn't unique, but there's issues: most of the quadropters I've seen don't have bandwidth to transmit pictures you'd want to see on telly, you get HD after landing. There's a danger of them running out of juice and landing in a race. They're not fast enough to overtake the riders, and would struggle to land on a moving car; so they're not going to be deployed by follow cars as in the drone design any time soon.