IT Security Notes: ATM pin reversal scam

The letter

If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN number in reverse. For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in 4321. The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine.

The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.

This information was recently broadcasted on TV and it states that it is seldom used because people don't know it exists.

Why is it nonsense?

What happens if your pin is the same in straight order as in reverse order? (i.e.: 9229, 3113, etc...)
Tell me (without thinking more than a second) you PIN number in reverse... can you? You probably would have to think longer...
How would the bank call the police? And who would be responsible if people would start abusing this "service" in case the bank calls automatically?
Even if the police gets automatically notified, by the time they do actually reach the ATM, the robber will be long gone with your cash... (and maybe your life)

The old saying "Your money or your life!" has always been ill-worded. It should have been "Your money or your life AND your money!"

What could work?
On the other hand we could think of better protections from ATM money snatching. I'm not really serious with these recommendations, but it would be fun if it existed:

The out of money solution
The bank could put in place a discreet button or a buttons-combination that when pressed would instruct the ATM to refuse dispensing money, appearing to have ran out of money. The thief would genuinely believe that this particular ATM ran out of money (that's Murphy's Law after all), and would walk away (with or without your ATM card, and with or without having taken your life!).

Of course for this to work, the bank would need to enable this function only to people who already successfully entered their PIN, otherwise non-customers would definitely abuse this to cause DoS. Of course this does not prevent the thief to steal your money, it's just that he wouldn't be able to steal it right here right now, he me still steal your ATM card, and kill you after you reveal him your code...
The 5^th Element Solution
[ You should really watch The 5 ^th Element if you haven't seen it yet. ] Anyway at some point in the movie, a bad guy attempts to pass as somebody else at an airline check-in counter and gets detected. Straight away a cage falls on him and prevent him from leaving, electronic aimed machine guns point at him to deter him from trying to break the cage, and a loud alarm start ringing.

Now that would be a great way to prevent a bunch of ATM attacks like ATM money snatching, ATM tampering, ATM forcing and more! Having said that it's a bit extreme... ;-)
The Run! Forest, run! solution
Of course the best solution is to run as fast as you can. There's nothing better than a big guy with a big blade pointed towards you to motivate you to break the 100 meters sprint world record...