Romeo Beckham Fined for Distracted Driving in London

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

A female passenger sat beside him, 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 take that matter further, but the phone use would prove 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. Magistrate Phillip Jordan imposed a £440 fine and three penalty points on his licence, along with £130 in costs and a £176 victim surcharge.

Rule 57 of the Highway Code states that dogs must be “suitably restrained” in a vehicle. Drivers who fail to maintain proper control can face prosecution for that offence or for careless driving. In this case, the dog remained a warning rather than a charge.

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

The incident draws an inevitable comparison with his father’s own brush with the law. Almost seven years earlier, David Beckham received a six-month driving ban for using his mobile phone at the wheel in slow-moving traffic in London’s West End in 2019. The former Manchester United and Real Madrid star admitted the offence and 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 case unfolded just days after he appeared at a New York Fashion Week event, debuting a platinum-blond buzzcut. Back in London, it was the glow of a phone screen at a red light, rather than the flashbulbs of the runway, that put him under a harsher spotlight.