DVD Drive issue

My mother sent me a video this morning of her PCs DVD drive opening and closing randomly and erratically. In fact, so erratically, sometimes it would barely open before closing again. Now, I know it's defective, and most likely needs to be replaced, but I couldn't really explain to her what caused it besides the fact that DVD drives are THAT mass produced that if you go on any website you'll see tons of bad reviews even on a 4 or 5 star product.
I've never seen this happen, save for my laptops drive opening itself if there wasnt a disc in the drive, but never closed it didnt have that function.

What exactly happens that a drive goes bad like that? anyone have more experience?

This is kind of an interesting one that I wish I had seen earlier.

The easy answer is "something dun broke". The eject button or its circuitry could be damaged somehow that could cause it. The tray motor or some other component could be broken, as well, but both of those answers are pretty mundane. We all know that different types of component failure (whether it's due to misuse/abuse or not) are always around, but this post reminded me of a much cooler possible reason, but fortunately (or unfortunately), practically non-existent.

Back in the good old days of the interwebs, IE and Netscape were the big browsers of choice, it was possible to exploit Javascript, VBS and ActiveX to make the drive open or close. You could even embed code into images (I totally forget how). The exploit would allow someone to embed the code on a webpage and the drive would do its thing. Nothing was as satisfying as a having a script that opened someone's optical drive up with a browser popup stating "Beverage detected. Deploying cup holder. Please place desired beverage on the tray."

lol my mom did claim she thought she was "hacked"
thats amusing, i wish i was old enough to see that happen!

Silly mom, call an exorcist. Proceed to burn the drive. Buy a USB External to replace it.