Romeo Beckham Fined for Distracted Driving in London

Romeo Beckham has been fined after police caught him scrolling on his phone behind the wheel of his Porsche 911 Carrera at a central London traffic light.

The 23-year-old, son of former England captain David Beckham, was stopped in Westminster last September when an officer spotted him with both hands on his phone instead of the steering wheel as he waited at a red light on Victoria Street.

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

Pc Luke Short, who pulled Beckham over just before 11.20am on 16 September, said the young driver was clearly distracted.

“I looked across at the driver. 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,” his statement read. He added that Beckham did not appear to have proper control of the powerful sports car.

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

The officer chose not to pursue a separate charge over the dog, instead giving what he described as “words of advice concerning the insecure load, namely the dog”. Rule 57 of the Highway Code makes clear that animals must be “suitably restrained” in a vehicle, with drivers at risk of prosecution for driving without proper control or for careless driving if they fail to do so.

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

The incident draws an inevitable parallel with his father’s history on the road. Almost seven years earlier, David Beckham received a six-month driving ban after admitting using his mobile phone while at the wheel in slow-moving traffic in the 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 brush with the law came just days after he unveiled a new platinum-blond buzzcut at a New York Fashion Week event, a reminder that away from the catwalks and cameras, the rules of the road apply just the same.