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news
Kate Rothschild (credit - Geoff Pugh)Banking heiress banned from driving for six months after cyclist caught her using phone behind the wheel
Banking heiress Kate Rothschild has been banned from driving for six months after a cyclist spotted her using a phone behind the wheel after her car had stalled.
The music producer and scion of the famous Rothschild banking dynasty was reported to the police after cyclist Beatrice Goater passed her using her phone while sat in the driver’s seat of her Audi Q7 SUV in Fulham, west London, the Evening Standard reports.
The 41-year-old, who was prosecuted for the offence as she already had racked up too may points on her licence to receive a Fixed Penalty Notice, told Lavender Hill magistrates last week that she was checking the notes app on her phone after her vehicle’s ghost immobiliser had kicked in, stalling her car.
She admitted the offence but asked the court to consider sparing her a driving ban, claiming that she needs her car for emergencies due to the “very remote” location of her countryside cottage.
The magistrates rejected the mother-of-three’s plea, however, and handed her six penalty points which, added to her previous tally, saw her landed with an automatic six-month driving disqualification. She was also fined £450 and ordered to pay a further £280 in courts costs and fees.
Speaking to the court, cyclist Goater explained that she was riding on New King’s Road in Fulham on 30 August 2022 when she noticed a motorist with “strawberry blonde hair” using her mobile phone.
“I am cycling and I pass the vehicle”, she said. “I notice the driver on her phone and I ask her to stop using her phone. She pays no attention to my request.”
> Mr Loophole applauds police action against "vigilante cyclists" filming law-breaking drivers
In a letter to the court explaining the situation ahead of last week’s hearing, Rothschild claimed that her car “had cut out and the ghost immobiliser had kicked in stalling my car.”
She continued: “My partner had recently changed the code after having two cars stolen and the new code was written in the notes section which I was checking.
“I am, of course, aware that I have done wrong and that I have previous points on my licence. However, I just hope that you can and you will take this all into consideration.”
The heiress also told the court that it would be “really unsafe” for her to be banned from driving, as she mainly resides in a “very remote” cottage in Wiltshire, despite also having a home in Fulham.
“Taxis will often refuse to go up the track and emergency vehicles will not necessarily find it so not having a driver’s licence is really unsafe as my partner is often away and I have two teenage sons and a two-year-old baby boy”, she said.
“The thought of being at home with my sons and not being able to get them to a hospital should the need arise terrifies me.”
> Taxi driver warns CyclingMikey he will "end up needing the dentist" after challenging phone use
Rothschild is the second notable name in the space of a week to be found guilty of using a mobile phone while behind the wheel of a car in London.
At the weekend we reported that Jimmy Mulville, the co-founder of Hat Trick Productions, the company behind hit TV programmes such as Have I Got News For You, Father Ted, Derry Girls, and Room 101, was spotted using his phone by road safety campaigner and YouTuber CyclingMikey, real name Mike van Erp, while driving in traffic over Battersea Bridge last July.
According to Van Erp, after being confronted over his phone use, Mulville “flipped the bird” and shouted at the cyclist “go f*** yourself”.
Mulville, who was previously banned from driving in 2020 and handed another three points last October for speeding, was prosecuted for driving while using his mobile phone after not paying a Fixed Penalty fine.
At City of London magistrates court last week, the 68-year-old comedian, who belatedly admitted to using his phone to check a text, was handed six points on his licence and ordered to pay £1,000 fine, plus £625 in costs and a £400 court fee.
Noted camera cyclist Van Erp, whose widespread reporting of law-breaking motorists has also led to the successful prosecutions of Guy Ritchie and Chris Eubank, thanked Beatrice Goater on Twitter for reporting Rothschild for her phone use.
“Camera cyclists are everywhere, and you’ll never know when one of us might pitch up next to you,” he wrote. “Another driver bites the dust for driving badly.”
In January, speaking to road.cc, Mikey said “people need to see justice being done” and that any abuse he receives is simply because some motorists “feel they have the right to drive how they want”.
“In the beginning of my camera work, almost 17 years ago, I took a lot of strain at the abuse thrown my way,” he said. “I’d answer each comment seriously. Nowadays, there has been such a torrent of abuse and lies about me that I just let most of it wash off me.
“In the UK cyclists are considered by society to be ‘cockroaches of the road’, unworthy scum who freeload on the public highway and are terrible lawbreakers. For such a person to challenge a driver for lawbreaking is a massive affront to the social order, and people don’t like this.
“Many of those throwing abuse also feel that they have the right to drive how they want, and that nobody can tell them what to do. They see the prosecutions, and they are afraid of the consequences, and they are angry that someone dares to do this to them.”
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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The fact that such self driving cars don't BMW/Audi drivers do exist is proof - as if it were needed - that Gods don't exist
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Wouldn't generalisations about generations be, I don't know, "generationalisations"?
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No chance of that ever being a human being.
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40 comments
Van Twerp wasn't involved, so why do a rehash of his whole story..
Well it seems to have annoyed you, which is a good enough reason on its own.
Why not sell the Wiltshire cottage of ten bedrooms and move back to London, we don't need idiots here.
If she was genuinely concerned about the safety of her and her children, and understood that it was essential for her to be able to drive she wouldn't have racked up so many penalty points.
How much money did she fork out to come up with that pathetic excuse, and defend it in court? More than enough to have a private driver take here whereever she needed to go for 6 months no doubt.
Hmm
If a Rothschild cannot afford to pay taxi for 6 months, I must start worrying about the stability of the banking system.
But no worries, with a car stalling because of an immobillizer operating after having already started before, she can earn more money from her lawsuit to Audi.
I think it's an aftermarket immobiliser - but I take your point. And she should sue Audi for selling a car that realistically needs such aftermarket devices.
yeah, because what kind of a mother would risk a driving licence infraction whilst her child's life is at stake? Truly terrifying.
Is she thick, or does she assume the judge is?
The Q7 is a vanity behemoth, over 2 tonnes.
This won't be her first phone use behind the wheel, and it might not be enough to stop her.
Addicts.
She’s absolutely frickin mind boggling minted. She also used to be married to Ben Goldsmith who is also absolutely frickin mind boggling minted. I have no doubt money passed her way after their divorce to add to her massive pile of cash. She could quite easily afford to charter a helicopter ever day of the week, or at the very least a personal driver at her beck and call using a 4x4 for that nasty drive.
At the very least she could buy a mountain bike.
Possibly a gravel bike - would depend how rough the track up to her cottage really is.
Not so sure, have you seen what Gravel bikes cost these days?
She could buy a bike manufacturer and have the firm build her a series of different bikes to suit her mood.
I agree. She'll have to resort to using Jeeves and the Maybach. Horrifying!
Ghost immobiliser
I am no legal eagle but using a phone whilst the car was not only stationary but also stalled seems to be a very weak offence. Personally, I would not have reported the lady and I reckon most people who might moan are really just moaning about the fact that she is worth a bob or two (and they aren't).
Is there any evidence that she didn't just make that up? If that was the case, why didn't she try to explain and apologise to Goater?
Indeed - it is difficult to stall an automatic. And the immobiliser thing only kicks in to prevent the stalled car being started, it doesn't first stall the engine that was already running happily (could we call that "established" running?) Sounds like a pack of lies to me.
So given that most modern cars cut the engine when stationary, would you change the law so that anyone can use their mobile when in a traffic jam or at a traffic light once the engine has cut off?
I haven't looked in to it, so happy to be corrected, but I think an immobiliser would require the driver to <enter a PIN?> then turn the ignition to turn the engine over then press the clutch and put it in gear, rather than just press the clutch and put it in gear?
I think the whole stop/start engine technology, and whether the engine is turning or not, is a red herring - the ignition is still on. It's no different in a BEV. Moreover to use the phone you must not only have the ignition off, you must be safely parked. Stalled in traffic is not parked.
It would actually be interesting if someone genuinely did find themselves in her situation (it would be more convincing if the car was a manual, difficult to make a judge believe you stalled an automatic.) I suppose to comply they would have to exit the vehicle or get someone else to interrogate the phone.
True - when the engine is not turning in stop/start mode, it can restart at any time, for example, if the battery voltage drops, cabin temp needs air-con, vehicle in front moves away, etc. So when it's on, it's on. It's only off when it's actually switched off.
I don't understand:
Wouldn't that mean she was sat in her car with the engine turned off?
I'm guessing there was more to it than that.
It sounds like a very reasonable excuse. I suspect the magistrates didn't believe it.
Presumably she would have had to enter the ghost immobiliser PIN in order to drive the car in the first place, so it seems unlikely that she would have needed to look up the number again... I think your assumption that the magistrates decided she had made up the excuse is a pretty likely one.
Lying to the court - never a smart move.
Why did she have the PIN stored in an app on her phone, knowing that it's illegal to use your phone while driving? Why not have it written down on a post-it note in her bag or something??
What is this "post-it" that you speak of? Is it like my sticky notes app?
It is very similar but by some miracle it still works when your phone battery is flat
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