Romeo Beckham Fined for Phone Use While Driving

Romeo Beckham has been fined and handed penalty points on his licence after being caught 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 a police officer spotted him at a red light with both hands on his phone rather than the steering wheel.

According to court papers, 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, said the young driver was clearly distracted and not in proper control of the powerful sports car as it waited at the lights on Victoria Street, just before 11.20am on 16 September.

“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 the car over and spoke to Beckham at the roadside. He decided not to pursue a separate offence over the dog, opting instead to give “words of advice concerning the insecure load, namely the dog”.

Rule 57 of the Highway Code makes clear that dogs must be “suitably restrained” in a vehicle. Failure to do so can lead to prosecution for driving without proper control or for careless driving if it affects the way the car is handled.

At Westminster magistrates’ court last Thursday, Beckham was convicted of being a driver not in a position to have proper control. Magistrate Phillip Jordan issued a £440 fine and imposed three penalty points on his licence. Beckham was also ordered to pay £130 in costs and a £176 victim surcharge.

Police said Beckham had earlier been offered the chance to pay a fixed penalty and attend a driver-awareness course to avoid criminal proceedings, but he did not respond.

The case inevitably echoes his father’s own brush with the law. Almost seven years earlier, David Beckham received a six-month driving ban for using his phone at the wheel in slow-moving traffic in London’s West End in 2019. The former Manchester United and Real Madrid midfielder admitted the offence and told the court at the time he would miss driving his children – Romeo, then 16, Cruz, then 14, and Harper, then 7 – to school during the ban.

For Romeo, the incident came just days after he debuted a new platinum-blond buzzcut at a New York Fashion Week event, swapping the runway and red carpet for a far less glamorous appearance in the magistrates’ court.