Politicians in Germany are calling for tough new penalties for motorists who stop to film accident scenes on their mobile phones.

German MPs have called for those who block the emergency services by trying to film to have their driving licenses suspended and their mobile phones confiscated.

“Gawpers who enjoy accident misery and block police and rescue workers by filming the suffering of others, must be punished with a one-month driving ban,” Alexander Graf Lambsdorff of the opposition Free Democrat party (FDP) told Bild newspaper.

Drivers currently face fines for blocking emergency services and photographing the injured without their consent, as well as using mobile phones at the wheel. The German government is considering changes in the law to ban photographing the dead.

But government and opposition MPs argue the proposed changes don’t go far enough.

“Anyone who films accidents and is intoxicated by the suffering of their fellow human beings, lacks any decency and respect,” said Marc Henrichmann of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU)

“In such cases, driving bans or the confiscation of their mobiles as a signal of the rule of law should not be taboo.”

The call comes after a number of incidents in which police and rescue workers have accused onlookers of blocking them from reaching the scene of traffic accidents and slowing treatment of the injured.