Romeo Beckham Fined for Using Phone While Driving
Romeo Beckham has been fined and handed penalty points after a police officer spotted him scrolling on his phone at the wheel of his Porsche 911 Carrera in central London.
The 23-year-old, son of former England captain David Beckham, was pulled over in Westminster last September when an officer noticed he had both hands on his phone instead of the steering wheel while stationary at a red light.
Court papers revealed that a woman sat in the passenger seat was also looking at her phone, with an “unrestrained” dog on her lap.
Pc Luke Short, who stopped Beckham on Victoria Street just before 11.20am on 16 September, said the young driver appeared distracted and not in proper control of the powerful sports car.
“I looked across at the driver,” Pc Short said in his statement. “I saw that he … had his head tilted down and appeared to be looking down at a mobile phone he was holding low in his lap, near the base of the steering wheel.”
The officer pulled Beckham over and challenged him at the roadside. He chose to give “words of advice” over the unsecured dog rather than pursue a separate offence, but the issue of phone use at the wheel would not go away so easily.
At Westminster magistrates’ court last Thursday, Beckham was convicted of being a driver not in a position to have proper control of the vehicle. He received a £440 fine and three penalty points on his licence.
Magistrate Phillip Jordan also ordered him to pay £130 in costs and a £176 victim surcharge.
Rule 57 of the Highway Code states that dogs must be “suitably restrained” in a vehicle so they cannot distract the driver or cause injury. Breaches can lead to prosecutions for driving without proper control or careless driving.
According to police, Beckham had been offered the chance to avoid criminal proceedings by paying a fixed penalty and attending a driver-awareness course, but he did not respond to the offer.
The case inevitably draws comparison with his father’s history behind the wheel. Almost seven years earlier, David Beckham was banned from driving for six months after admitting using his mobile phone in slow-moving traffic in London’s West End in 2019. He told the court at the time he would miss driving his children – Romeo, then 16, Cruz, 14, and Harper, 7 – to school during the ban.
For Romeo, the incident came just days after he appeared at a New York Fashion Week event, debuting a new platinum-blond buzzcut. The hairstyle turned heads on the runway. The driving offence has now done the same in the courtroom.
