Romeo Beckham Fined for Scrolling 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 Sir David Beckham, was stopped in Westminster last September when a police officer spotted him with both hands on his phone instead of the steering wheel while stationary at a red light.

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 pulled Beckham over, said the young driver was clearly distracted and not in proper control of the car.

“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 incident happened on September 16 last year, just before 11.20am, as Beckham waited at a red light on Victoria Street in Westminster.

The officer decided against immediate action over the loose dog, choosing instead to offer “words of advice concerning the insecure load, namely the dog”. Under Rule 57 of the Highway Code, animals must be “suitably restrained” in vehicles, with failure to do so potentially leading to charges of driving without proper control or careless driving.

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

Police said Beckham had previously been given the option to settle the matter by paying a fixed penalty and attending a driver-awareness course, a route that would have kept the case out of court. He did not respond to that offer.

The episode inevitably draws comparisons with his father’s own brush with the law behind the wheel. Almost seven years earlier, David Beckham received a six-month driving ban for using his mobile phone 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 at the time he would miss driving his children – Romeo, then 16, Cruz, then 14, and Harper, then 7 – to school during the ban.

Romeo’s latest appearance in the headlines came just days after he had shown off a new platinum-blond buzzcut at a New York Fashion Week event. This time, though, the spotlight fell not on the runway, but on the rules of the road.