Romeo Beckham Fined for Using Phone 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 instead of the steering wheel.

A woman sat in the passenger seat was also looking at her phone, with an “unrestrained” dog on her lap, according to court documents.

Pc Luke Short, who stopped Beckham 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 pulled the Porsche over and challenged Beckham at the roadside. He chose to give “words of advice” about the unsecured dog rather than pursue that matter further, but the use of the phone at the wheel proved far more costly.

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, taking the total financial hit to £746.

The Highway Code is explicit on both fronts. Rule 57 states that dogs must be “suitably restrained” in a vehicle, while drivers using a hand-held mobile phone or failing to keep proper control risk prosecution for careless or dangerous driving.

Police said Beckham had initially been offered the chance to avoid criminal proceedings by paying a fixed penalty and attending a driver-awareness course. He did not respond, and the case went to court.

The incident inevitably invites comparison with his father’s history on the road. Almost seven years ago, David Beckham received a six-month driving ban after admitting using his mobile phone in slow-moving traffic in London’s West End in 2019. At that hearing, the former Manchester United and Real Madrid midfielder told the court he would miss driving his children – Romeo, then 16, Cruz, then 14, and Harper, then 7 – to school during the suspension.

This latest case involving Romeo unfolded just days after he had debuted a new platinum-blond buzzcut at a New York Fashion Week event, a reminder of the high-profile world he moves in off the pitch as well as on it.

The name, the car, the postcode: all of it underlines how visible every mistake becomes for the Beckham family. On this occasion, it was a moment at a red light in Westminster – and a glance at a phone – that ended up on the court record.