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 stopped by police in Westminster last September when an officer spotted him with both hands on his phone while stationary at a red light.

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 pulled Beckham over on Victoria Street just before 11.20am on 16 September, said the young driver was clearly distracted.

“I looked across at the driver,” his statement read. “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 judged that Beckham did not have proper control of the powerful sports car. He also noted concern about the dog, describing it as an “insecure load”.

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 added three penalty points to his licence. Beckham was also ordered 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. Failure to do so can lead to prosecutions for driving without proper control or careless driving, something Pc Short chose to address with “words of advice” rather than a separate charge in this case.

Police said Beckham had initially been offered the chance to settle the matter by paying a fixed penalty and attending a driver-awareness course, which would have spared him a criminal conviction. He did not respond to that offer, and the case proceeded to court.

The incident inevitably draws comparisons with his father’s driving history. Almost seven years earlier, David Beckham received a six-month driving ban after admitting using his mobile phone at the wheel in slow-moving traffic in London’s West End in 2019. At the time, he told the court he would miss driving his children – Romeo, then 16, Cruz, then 14, and Harper, then 7 – to school during the ban.

Romeo’s run-in with the law came just days after he unveiled a new platinum-blond buzzcut at a New York Fashion Week event, a reminder that for the Beckham family, life on and off the road rarely escapes public scrutiny.