Romeo Beckham Fined for Using Phone While Driving
Romeo Beckham has been fined after being caught using his phone at the wheel of his Porsche 911 Carrera in central London, in an incident that echoed his father’s own driving lapse almost seven years ago.
The 23-year-old 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 on the steering wheel. Court documents revealed a woman sat beside him in the passenger seat, also looking at her phone, with an unrestrained dog on her lap.
Pc Luke Short, the Metropolitan Police officer who stopped Beckham, said the young driver was clearly distracted and not in proper control of the car as it sat 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 Porsche over and challenged Beckham, later deciding to issue “words of advice” about the “insecure load” – the dog on the passenger’s lap – rather than pursuing a separate offence over the animal.
Rule 57 of the Highway Code is clear: dogs must be suitably restrained in a vehicle. Breaching that guideline can lead to prosecutions for driving without proper control or for careless driving. On this occasion, the dog drew a warning, but the phone use did not pass without sanction.
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.
Police said Beckham had previously 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 matter progressed to court.
The case inevitably revives memories of David Beckham’s own brush with the law behind the wheel. In 2019, the former England captain received a six-month driving ban for using his mobile phone in slow-moving traffic in the West End. He admitted the offence and told the court he would miss driving his children – Romeo, then 16, Cruz, 14, and Harper, 7 – to school during the suspension.
For Romeo, the incident came just days after he had appeared at a New York Fashion Week event, debuting a new platinum-blond buzzcut. Back in London, under the watch of the Metropolitan Police rather than the fashion cameras, the focus was not on his image but on his responsibilities as a driver.
